These are two simple ROS point cloud helper nodes. read reads a point cloud from file (ply or vtk) and publishes it as a sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 message. write subscribes to a sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 topic and writes received messages to seperate files (ply).

For visualization, make sure to set the Decay Time in the PointCloud2 tab in rviz to a high number to get the point cloud visible for a long time.

The point cloud io package has been tested under ROS Melodic and Ubuntu 18.04. This is research code, expect that it changes often and any fitness for a particular purpose is disclaimed.

Author: Péter Fankhauser, Remo Diethelm
Affiliation: ANYbotics
Maintainer: Remo Diethelm, [email protected]

This projected was initially developed at ETH Zurich (Autonomous Systems Lab & Robotic Systems Lab).

This work is conducted as part of ANYmal Research, a community to advance legged robotics.

This software is built on the Robotic Operating System (ROS), which needs to be installed first. Additionaly, the it depends on following software:

• Point Cloud Library (PCL).

In order to install the Point Cloud IO, clone the latest version from this repository into your catkin workspace and compile the package using ROS.

cd ~/catkin_workspace/src
git clone https://github.com/anybotics/point_cloud_io.git
cd ../
catkin_make

To create your own launch-file, you can use the examples from point_cloud_io/launch/....

Load and publish a ply or vtk file with

rosrun point_cloud_io read _file_path:=/home/user/my_point_cloud.ply _topic:=/my_topic _frame:=/sensor_frame

Optionally, you can also add _rate:=1.0 to have the node publish your point cloud at the specified rate.

Subscribe and save point clouds to a ply file with

rosrun point_cloud_io write _topic:=/your_topic _folder_path:=/home/user/my_point_clouds

Optionally, you can set parameters to fit the point cloud file names to your needs:

• _file_prefix:=my_prefix (default: "point_cloud")
• _file_ending:=my_ending (default: "ply", currently only format which is supported for writing)
• _add_counter_to_path:=false (default: true)
• _add_frame_id_to_path:=true (default: false)
• _add_stamp_sec_to_path:=true (default: false)
• _add_stamp_nsec_to_path:=true (default: false)

Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker.