[ROS Q&A] 151 – Rviz receives LaserScan messages but doesn’t display them

27/08/2018

In the video, we’ll show how to properly visualize LaserScan messages in RViz.

Step 0. Create a project in ROS Development Studio(ROSDS)

ROSDS helps you follow our tutorial in a fast pace without dealing without setting up an environment locally. If you haven’t had an account yet, you can create a free account here. Let’s create a new project and call it laser_qa.

Step 1. Clone the code and create a package

The questioner provides the code he used. Let’s clone it first.

cd catkin_ws/src
git clone http://github.com/erenaud3/fakeLaserScan.git

In the /launch/fakeLaserScan.launch file, please leave the node tag and comment out the others since we don’t need them. Then we can compile and run the package

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch beginner_tutorial fakeLaserScan.launch

To visualize the laser scan, we’ll use rviz

rosrun rviz rviz

After launching rviz, go to Tools->Graphical Tool. You’ll see the rviz window pops out.

In rviz, click Add->LaserScan to add a visualization. Then we select the topic /fakeScan, however, there is nothing.

It turns out the size of the display is too small. Please change it to a larger value. e.g. 0.1

You should see the visualization now.

Want to learn more?

If you are interested in learning more about ROS, please check our ROS Basic in 5 Days course.

Edit by: Tony Huang

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Topics: Laser scan | RViz