TF updating very slowly

edit

Hey everyone,

I am trying to publish Pose messages based on distances I get from ar_track_alvar. I have static transforms which relate the markers to the map. These static transforms broadcast at 100Hz. I take the position and orientation data from the marker message and create a transform from it. I then broadcast that transform (I can't use the one supplied by ar_track_alvar so I create my own). I then listen for a transform from the map to my robot in order to get my position and orientation with respect to the map, and then publish that as a pose message. This works fine, but the problem is that the poses are published with an intolerable delay. After moving my robot, it can take up to a minute for the pose to update. To be clear, poses continue to be published, but they reflect the old position of the data. I used rosrun tf tf_echoto track the tfs, and I found that the tf is reflecting old data also.

Additionally, I see a lot of errors saying:

Lookup would require extrapolation into the past. Requested time XXXXXX but the earliest data is at time YYYYYYY, when looking up transform from frame [thor] to frame [map].

Despite my constant broadcasting and the static transforms.

Things I have tried:

I have gotten rid of the waitForTransform call in case that was adding some latency. I have reduced the tag subscribers buffer to 1 to ensure processing of only the most recent message. I have added extra AsyncSpinners.

These had no effects. Does anyone have any idea why it is taking the tfs so long to broadcast?

Relevant code:

//Figure out which tag we are looking at.
    int tagID = msg->markers[0].id;
    std::stringstream ss;
    ss << "hsmrs/marker_" << tagID;
    std::string markerFrameID = ss.str();

    //Manually create transform from robot to tag
    tf::Transform transform;

    double x, y;
    x = msg->markers[0].pose.pose.position.x;
    y = msg->markers[0].pose.pose.position.y;

    tf::Quaternion q;
    tf::quaternionMsgToTF(msg->markers[0].pose.pose.orientation, q);

    transform.setOrigin( tf::Vector3(x, y, 0.0) );
    transform.setRotation(q);

    //Broadcast transform
    ROS_INFO("Broadcasting transform!");
    br.sendTransform(tf::StampedTransform(transform, ros::Time::now(), markerFrameID, "thor"));
    ROS_INFO("Transform broadcasted!");

    //Listen for transform from map to robot
    ROS_INFO("Listening for transform!");
    tf::StampedTransform mapTransform;
    try{
                listener.waitForTransform("map", "thor", ros::Time(0) ros::Duration(0.1));
        listener.lookupTransform("map", "thor",
            ros::Time(0), mapTransform);
        ROS_INFO("Transform heard");    
    }
    catch (tf::TransformException &ex) {
        ROS_ERROR("%s",ex.what());
        return;
    }

    //Unpack position and orientation
    double map_x, map_y;
    map_x = mapTransform.getOrigin().x();
    map_y = mapTransform.getOrigin().y();

    geometry_msgs::Quaternion quat;
    tf::quaternionTFToMsg(mapTransform.getRotation(), quat);

    //Publish pose as geometry message
    geometry_msgs::Pose pose;
    pose.position.x = map_x;
    pose.position.y = map_y;
    pose.orientation = quat;

    pose_pub.publish(pose);

EDIT:

The static publisher was running on a separate computer. By running it on the robot this problem disappeared. But I need it to work on the workstation computer. How can I make it work?