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The odometry measurements are a measure of how far the robot has traveled with respect to the /odom frame. The point of odometry messages is to give a measure of the distance the robot has traveled. Using transforms, you can then publish a transform from the odometry frame (typically where the robot was initialized) to some fixed frame (/world or /map) which marks a known, fixed location in space. Thus, you then will have a transform from your fixed point to the initial location of the robot, and then you will publish messages and transforms that will describe the transform from the /odom frame to /base_link frame.