point_cloud2.read_points and then?

asked 2016-07-27 07:28:35 -0500

flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

3339 ●96 ●138 ●161 https://github.com/mehditlili

I have a topic publishing a point cloud of type sensors_msgs.PointCloud2. I can subscribe to it and read it using sensors_msgs.point_cloud2.read_points function but then I get and object of type "generator". How do I access the coordinates of the points in this object? I want to write a service that checks the maximum allowed height in some specific target areas (the point cloud represents the ceiling). I am using python.

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answered 2016-07-27 09:59:22 -0500

NEngelhard
3519 ●24 ●58 ●89

read_points gives you a generator (keyword 'yield'). So you can just iterate over it to find your obstacles and not crash your shiny robot

from sensor_msgs.msg import PointCloud2
from sensor_msgs import point_cloud2

def callback_pointcloud(data):
    assert isinstance(data, PointCloud2)
    gen = point_cloud2.read_points(data)
    print type(gen)
    for p in gen:
      print p  # type depends on your data type, first three entries are probably x,y,z

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What would be the other 3 entries ? are they RGB color values ?

Avhi ( 2021-12-19 21:22:26 -0500 )edit

When I use this code, it gives me an assertion error: cloud is not a sensor_msgs.msg.PointCloud2. What would be causing this and how would I fix it?

bwhal ( 2023-05-15 11:47:14 -0500 )edit

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answered 2016-07-27 09:58:26 -0500

Mehdi.

3339 ●96 ●138 ●161 https://github.com/mehditlili

updated 2016-07-27 10:00:47 -0500

After looking into the source code I found out that this read_points is a generator function that yields the next value of a cloud each time it is called. It works also as an iterator and calling it in a loop will deliver all pointcloud points:

cloud_points = []
for p in point_cloud2.read_points(pc2, field_names = ("x", "y", "z"), skip_nans=True):
    cloud_points.append(p)

Here pc2 is my pointcloud of type sensor_msgs/PointCloud2

and cloud_points will then be a list of 3D points forming the cloud.

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2

This would be too slow. Try this instead:

cloud_points = list(point_cloud2.read_points(cloud, skip_nans=True, field_names = ("x", "y", "z")))

ozgurovic ( 2017-11-14 08:23:14 -0500 )edit

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answered 2022-09-13 07:32:27 -0500

Lbern
11 ●1 ●2

updated 2022-09-15 04:02:35 -0500

As of ROS2 humble there is also read_points_numpy (see here) which would give you directly a 2D NumPy array. For example:

cloud = point_cloud2.read_points_numpy(
    msg, field_names=['x', 'y', 'z', "intensity"], skip_nans=True)

Note that there also exists a read_points_list (see here) at least for galactic, foxy, and humble which would have simplified the code of the other answers.

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point_cloud2.read_points and then?

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