Frame Conventions for Interactive Markers

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You can attach Markers to the controls in InteractiveMarkers. The InteractiveMarker has its own Header/frame_id as does the Marker attached to the InteractiveMarkerControl.

If you publish two InteractiveMarkers that are completely identical except for the InteractiveMarker's frame_id, you get two different behaviors.

Let's say there's a moving frame called "up" and a stationary frame called "world." We want to put a marker at the up frame, so we create a simple box Marker with the frame_id "up". To make an interactive marker of this is easy, but you have the choice of whether to have the InteractiveMarker's frame_id be up or world.

If its up, then the marker will move with the frame up. However, if the IM's frame is "world", then the marker will NOT move with the frame.

This phenomenon is illustrated by this video and the following code.

Question: Is there some hidden semantics that I'm missing here, or is this just a bug?

#!/usr/bin/env python

import roslib; roslib.load_manifest("interactive_markers")
import rospy
from visualization_msgs.msg import *
from interactive_markers.interactive_marker_server import *
from tf import TransformBroadcaster
import tf.transformations

def make_marker(frame, color):
    int_marker = InteractiveMarker()
    int_marker.header.frame_id = frame
    int_marker.name = frame

    box_marker = Marker()
    box_marker.type = Marker.CUBE
    box_marker.scale.x = 0.5
    box_marker.scale.y = 0.05
    box_marker.scale.z = 0.05
    box_marker.color.r = color[0]
    box_marker.color.g = color[1]
    box_marker.color.b = color[2]
    box_marker.color.a = 1.0
    box_marker.header.frame_id = '/up'

    box_control = InteractiveMarkerControl()
    box_control.always_visible = True
    box_control.markers.append( box_marker )
    int_marker.controls.append( box_control )
    return int_marker

if __name__=="__main__":
    rospy.init_node("simple_marker")
    server = InteractiveMarkerServer("r2_teleop")

    server.insert(make_marker('/up', (0,0,1)))
    server.insert(make_marker('/world', (0,1,0)))
    server.applyChanges()

    tfx = TransformBroadcaster()
    start = rospy.Time.now()
    while not rospy.is_shutdown():
        x = (rospy.Time.now()-start).to_sec()
        yaw = (x % 10.0)*3.14*2/10.0
        tfx.sendTransform((0, 0, 0.5),
                     tf.transformations.quaternion_from_euler(0, 0, yaw),
                     rospy.Time.now(),
                     'up',
                     "world")