Publishing TF tree from Simulink to ROS

I am using the Simulation 3d Camera and Lidar placed on a vehicle in Unreal Engine to generate image and pointcloud data. I want to use the ROS toolbox to publish these topics. I was able to convert the image and pointcloud data to ROS messages and publish them, but I am unable to visualize the pointclud in Rviz because that requires tf data.

Is there a way that I can create a tf tree through simulink and publish it to ROS?

Answer 1

[Prabeen Sahu]

Hi Dilip,

You can write your own transformations(tf2_msgs/TFMessage messages) and try publishing them to /tf topic directly from Simulink using Publish block.

Alternatively, without publishing tf data you can try this quick workaround.You can just set the FrameId field in the header for the image or point cloud to /base_link, which should show the data in Rviz at the /base_link.

You can also visualize the converted image and pointcloud ros messages in Simulink directly using Read Image block and Read Point Cloud block.

-Prabeen