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Passing a pointer as a ROS msg

asked 2012-04-08 09:49:23 -0500

Alekzander gravatar image

updated 2014-04-20 14:09:18 -0500

ngrennan gravatar image

Hello, im creating a basic vision system which implements filters through a pipeline structure. My point cloud is grabbed by a kinect. The thing is i would like t send just a pointer to the cloud as a ROS message, in order to get a faster and more efficient processing. Is there a way to do this? thanks

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answered 2012-04-08 10:17:39 -0500

Mac gravatar image

updated 2012-04-11 05:22:40 -0500

...not as such. ROS messages are transmitted over the network; as a result, "passing a pointer" doesn't make any sense.

But wait, there's more!

One possibility is to just implement your pipeline in a single node; then it can pass pointers around because it's all in one process.

Another is to use nodelets, which offer a way of defining something that behaves like a node, but lets you have several in the same process; these were devised to solve exactly the problem you're talking about.

A third option is ecto; where ROS is by-design asynchronous (which makes multi-input perceptual pipelines very painful), ecto is by-design synchronous, to make such pipelines easy. Ecto's still in heavy development, but it'll be seriously cool when it's done.

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answered 2012-04-08 10:26:51 -0500

Alekzander gravatar image

Thank you very much, I didnt know the difference between nodes and nodelets, ill look into it. Thanks again.

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Glad to help. Give me an upvote, and accept the answer?

Mac gravatar image Mac  ( 2012-04-09 06:18:29 -0500 )edit

And use comments instead of answers :)

felix k gravatar image felix k  ( 2012-04-09 22:53:13 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2012-04-08 09:49:23 -0500

Seen: 2,308 times

Last updated: Apr 11 '12