In today’s video we’re going to see what is tf view_frame and how it works.

 

Step 0. Create a project in Robot Ignite Academy(RIA)

We have the best online ROS course available in RIA. It helps you learn ROS in the easiest way without setting up ROS environment locally. The only thing you need is a browser! Create an account here and start to browse the trial course for free now! We’ll use the TF ROS 101 unit 4 as an example today.

Step 1. TF

To publish tf topic, you have to execute the following command in this example.

roslaunch pi_robot_pkg pi_robot_control.launch

Then check it with

rostopic echo /tf -n1

It will public all the coordinate frame available in the simulation, but it’s a mass.

We can also use RViz to visualize the TF by launching

rosrun rviz rviz

But it also looks not so nice.

It turns out the tf put the coordinate frames in a tree structure. You can run the following command to plot the tree.

rosrun tf view_frames

If you open the .pdf file it generated, you all see all the frames in tf and their relationship.

Want to learn more?

If you are new to ROS, I highly recommend you to take any of the following courses on Robot Ignite Academy:

▸ TF ROS 101

▸ ROS Basics In 5 Days (Python) 

▸ ROS Basics In 5 Days (C++)

 

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Thanks for watching.

 

Edited by: Tony Huang