Rosbag Panel for the ROS 3D Robot Visualizer (RViz)

Control native rosbag play tool directly from RViz. This plugin allows you to play, pause, set speed, set start/end position, select topics, and generate filtered rosbags from the current selection.

Features

Camera Preview for fast Navigation (while dragging the slider)

It is possible to configure the sensor_msgs::Image Topic for the preview. This is useful for fast navigation in the bag file in order to find the desired scenario. In this example, we check our multi-object tracker's performance for difficult scenarios (person in wheelchair crossing the street).

Select Topics

You can easily select or deselect topics in a tree view. The tree view is very useful to quickly disable a whole group of topics by their namespace.

Set Start and End Position

You can set the start and end position of the playback with a slider. This is useful to focus on a specific scenario. Also useful with the 'loop' option for infinite playback of a specific scenario. While dragging the slider also a preview image is shown.

Set Playback Speed

You can set the playback speed with a slider. This is useful to slow down the playback for detailed analysis or speed up the playback for fast navigation.

Open Rosbag File in GUI

You can open a Rosbag file in the GUI. This is useful to quickly switch between different bags.

Generate filtered Rosbag from Current Selection

You can generate a filtered Rosbag from the current selection. This is useful to create a new bag with only the desired topics and a specific time range.

Note

Unlike existing tools, such as rosbag filter, this tool takes care of latched topics (e.g. /static_tf), provides a GUI, and is faster since it is C++ based.

Feature Summary:

• Open Rosbag File
• Play
• Pause
• Position & Start-End Slider
• Image Preview for fast Navigation
• Speed Control
• Select Topics
• Pause on Topic (Stepping)
  • Exact Pause for Topics included in Bag
  • Approximate Pause for (reprocessed) Topics not included in Bag (Pause delayed by Message Latency)
• Create new filtered Rosbag:
  • Uses start/end Position of slider
  • Uses selected Topics
  • Unlike rosbag filter CLI tool it takes care of latched topics (e.g. /static_tf), provides GUI, and is faster since it is C++ based
• Exposes all options of rosbag play as GUI Settings

How to install?

1. This plugin requires a patched version of ros_comm in order to make the rosbag play tool remote controllable by ROS services. In the following we clone minimal version of ros_comm, which only contains the patched ROS packages and overlays the original ones. So there is no need to uninstall the original ros_comm packages:

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/UniBwTAS/ros_comm.git

2. Clone this repository & build it:

git clone https://github.com/UniBwTAS/rosbag_panel.git
catkin build rosbag_panel

3. Source the workspace (or restart all Terminal Windows):

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
# alternatively source setup.zsh if you're using zsh instead of bash

How to use?

1. Start roscore in a Terminal:

roscore

2. Start rosbag play in a Terminal with the --server option (only avalable in patched version) and assign this ROS node the name rosbag_play (important to find its ROS services):

rosbag play --server __name:=rosbag_play

3. Start RViz in a Terminal:

rviz

4. In RViz, click on Panels -> Add New Panel -> rosbag_panel/RosbagPanel -> OK
5. Open desired Bag (if everything is grayed out, then step 2 did not work)

Troubleshooting:

• If the --server option is not available, then the patched version of ros_comm was not used. Sometimes it is required to clean your workspace, open a new terminal and rebuild the package such that the ROS workspace (typically in /opt/ros/noetic) is correctly overlay-ed:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin clean
catkin build rosbag_panel
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
# alternatively source setup.zsh if you're using zsh instead of bash

• Plugin is not available in RViz: Make sure the plugin was built and sourced correctly. If the plugin is still not available, then check the output of the catkin build command for any errors.