How to visualize surface normals as Marker::Arrow for each point in rviz?

asked 2011-02-16 03:13:22 -0600

Kadir Firat Uyanik

288 ●10 ●15 ●24 http://kadiruyanik.wor...

updated 2011-02-16 03:13:41 -0600

Hi,

I would like to show the surface normals of a point cloud in rviz. Below is what I was trying:

Create a MarkerArray and corresponding publisher
Resize the MarkerArray with the size of the point cloud to be visualized (25344 points in this case) at the very first
Assign frame_id, ns, id, type, action, color for each marker just once
update position of the arrows with the point cloud at each iteration
update markers scales with the point cloud normal data at each iteration
publish the markerarray

Whenever it publishes the markerarray, RAM blows up and swap is heavily used and PC stalls there.

What do you think I am doing very badly wrong here? Or isn't it possible to visualize that many arrows (25344 of them) in the rviz? If so, should I use other tools coming with PCL?

Thanks a lot...

-Kadir-

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

Comments

Hi Kadir, we did it with MarkerArray message but it also choked up rviz a bit. You can have a look at our code here: http://code.cs.tum.edu/indefero/index.php//p/mapping/source/tree/master/pcl_cloud_tools/src/pcl_normal_visualization.cpp D.

dejanpan ( 2011-02-17 04:00:30 -0600 )edit

The above link doesn't work. Any chance you still have this somewhere?

chinmay_sujir ( 2023-01-11 08:51:35 -0600 )edit

add a comment

answered 2011-02-16 13:00:21 -0600

Ivan Dryanovski

4954 ●52 ●70 ●86 http://robotics.ccny.cuny.edu/

It is very likely that rviz chokes up because of the amount of markers. I think each arrow is a separate 3D object. I would recommend using the pcl visualization tool:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/pcl_visualization

You can use the existing PointNormal data type, defined here:

http://www.ros.org/doc/api/pcl/html/point__types_8h_source.html

Since you already have the algorithm to calculate the normals, all you have to do is build a pcl cloud and fill out the fields. Here's the nice part about using pcl - you can set how many normals you want to display - for example, one every 10 or 20 points. This should make it much quicker.

edit flag offensive delete link

add a comment

How to visualize surface normals as Marker::Arrow for each point in rviz?

Comments

1 Answer

Question Tools

Stats

Related questions

How to visualize surface normals as Marker::Arrow for each point in rviz? edit

Comments

1 Answer

Question Tools

Stats

Related questions

How to visualize surface normals as Marker::Arrow for each point in rviz?