How can you stream sensor data to ROS then watch a map get built from that data in real time?

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Thanks for the hector_slam suggestion! But I'm still not clear on how to take the raw sensor data and pump it into a readable form in ROS for it to be made into a map.

You need some kind of driver to read the data from your sensor and publish it in on one or several topics, generally using the sensor_msgs formats : http://wiki.ros.org/sensor_msgs. For instance if you use hokuyo laser scanners, you can use the hokuyo_node package.

You might want to have a look at this tutorial as well : http://wiki.ros.org/navigation/Tutorials/RobotSetup/Sensors

Beautiful response, that might be just what I was looking for. One last question before I close this up, just to clarify. I understand how to publish the sensor data to ROS. How can I take this data, now in ROS, and stream map building with it in rviz w/hector slam? Tutorials use existing .bags

AND - let's say I won't use a Hokuyo laser scanner but a single-point laser rangefinder, like a Fluke 411. Might all this still potentially work? Just, the map would build a lot slower since distance data from only a very small field is acquired at a time?

I edited my answer. Your last comment is a different question which deserves a different post, but you can have a look at the laser_drivers packages and you can google the presentation "Writing Hardware Drivers ROSCon". I am not familiar with the Fluke 411 so I cannot tell you much more.