sensor_msgs::PointCloud2 remove field from point cloud

edit

Would it be possible for you to give a short example? I am not sure about how to extract the desired data from the point cloud. My attempt looks like this: At first I copy the header and (only) the needed fields from the original message (input) to a new one (copy). Then I try to copy the data:

      for ( sensor_msgs::PointCloud2ConstIterator<float> data_it( input, "x" ); data_it != data_it.end(); ++data_it )
  {
    // x is at position [0], followed by y, z
    copy.data.push_back( data_it[0] );
    copy.data.push_back( data_it[1] );
    copy.data.push_back( data_it[2] );
  }

This doesn't work, however, the data of the copy remain empty.

Have you read this: http://wiki.ros.org/pcl/Overview

Hint: a message is not a pcl::PointCloud object.

You are right, I mixed up the different data types.

For my purposes I found this solution: Convert the sensor_msgs::PointCloud2 to a pcl::PointCloud<pcl::pointxyz> using pcl::fromROSMsg( msg, pcl_xyz ). By doing so all other fields are dropped, only x,y,z remains.

Then you can perform some operations on the point cloud and finally convert it back to a sensor_msgs::PointCloud2 pcl::toROSMsg(pcl_xyz, msg_xyz );

This may not be the fastest solution but it works.