displaying point cloud in rviz from .bag files, error

Question

I am trying to read .bag files, display the point cloud data in rviz.

rosbag play -l refined_point_clouds.bag 
[ INFO] [1313454488.757094980]: Opening refined_point_clouds.bag

Waiting 0.2 seconds after advertising topics... done.

Hit space to toggle paused, or 's' to step.
 [RUNNING]  Bag Time: 1284056763.769318   Duration: 1.105802 / 4.917923    

But I got the following error,

saying that

For frame [narrow_stereo_optical_frame]: No transform to fixed frame [/base_link]. TF error: [You requested a transform that is -1284043982668.005 miliseconds in the past, but the most recent transform in the tf buffer is -1284043980431.589 miliseconds old. ]

The coordinate frame in rviz was set as

The point cloud would appear correctly if i changed the fixed frame to /narrow_stereo_optical_frame.

The error seems related with the tf conversion time longer than the buffer can take.Confused... Could someone explain it to me? How can I avoid this problem, 'cuz I always stuck in this kind of problem... Thanks~

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Originally posted by vincent on ROS Answers with karma: 311 on 2011-08-15

Post score: 0

Answer 1

Does the tf exists between the /base_link frame and /narrow_stereo_optical_frame?

You can verify this by adding "tf" in the rviz display, and checking the tf tree.

They should appear cascaded

/base_link (parent)

/narrow_stereo_optical_frame (child)

If it does exists try adding playing the rosbag with the clock command:

rosbag play -l refined_point_clouds.bag --clock

If that doesn't work, you might need to look at the actual setup from which the data was recorded.

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Originally posted by Zack with karma: 216 on 2011-08-15

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by vincent on 2011-08-16:
i checked the tf tree, don't know why, but now there is no /narrow_stereo_optical_frame anymore, actually just 2 frames: /base_footprint and /odom_combined. I had to use another similar bag file, it showed that /base_link wasn't the parent frame, changed it to /base_footprint, worked. Thanks

Answer 2

Did you record /tf in the bag? This is needed. The fact the timestamps are inconsistent could indicate some node is broadcasting a new /tf at the moment of playing. Might wanna kill nodes broadcasting /tf and then play the bag file (which should have of course recorded /tf besides your data).

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Originally posted by Marco with karma: 77 on 2011-08-15

This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by vincent on 2011-08-16:
i was using the bag files from grasp playpen dataset, which was well recorded and have /tf in it. And no other nodes was broadcasting /tf in my case