Error transforming pose from frame 'lidar' to frame 'map'

[ajinkyakhoche]

I'm extracting a BoundingBoxArray() by running a 3d object detector on a point cloud. The boxes are visualized correctly when the rviz frame is set to 'lidar' (i.e. local frame). But when i select the global/fixed frame (called 'map'), rviz gives error and I don't see anything visualized. Why? The TF tree is correct (i.e. transform between 'map' and 'lidar' exists). Any help would be appreciated.

[k-okada]

@ajinkyakhoche thanks for report, could you provide more information on how to reproduce your problem?
ROS package with launch file, rviz config file, and node to publish frames are fine.

[ajinkyakhoche]

@k-okada Please find link to folder jsk_visualization_issue_834

Let me know if you can't access it. I've uploaded a rosbag with lidar point cloud (/lidar_top), bounding boxes (/pp_boxes) and /tf. I've also uploaded the rviz configuration and a pdf showing tf frames.

Problem occurs when i change fixed frame from lidar_top to map

[k-okada]

@ajinkyakhoche thank you for nice example. I think the root cause is inconsistent time stamp between header and boxes . The time in header and tf seems consistent, but boxes is not. Could you check your node to publish the bounding boxes? How do they add timestamp?

---
header: 
  seq: 104
  stamp: 
    secs: 1532402931
    nsecs: 348383000
  frame_id: "lidar_top"
boxes: 
  - 
    header: 
      seq: 0
      stamp: 
        secs: 1636050718
        nsecs: 956121683
      frame_id: "lidar_top"
    pose: 
      position: 
        x: 7.88828659058
        y: 16.3989486694
        z: -0.3765630126
      orientation: 

One solution is to modify messages

#!/usr/bin/env python

import rospy
from jsk_recognition_msgs.msg import BoundingBoxArray

def cb(msg):
    for b in msg.boxes:
        print(b)
        b.header.stamp = msg.header.stamp
        #b.header.stamp = rospy.Time(0)
    pub.publish(msg)

rospy.init_node('fix_bbox')
pub = rospy.Publisher("pp_bboxes_fix", BoundingBoxArray)
sub = rospy.Subscriber("pp_boxes", BoundingBoxArray, cb)
rospy.spin()

Subscribing pp_bboxes_fix and change Fixed frame to map seems ok.

Another solution is to use timestamp in msg->header.stamp when call transform() in pulugin, see #836.

[ajinkyakhoche]

This solved my problem, thanks! I'll close this issue for now and get back if i face more issues.