Visualize data during experiment: Gazebo/RVIZ

Question

My current setup involves

• 3 robots with pandaboards
• a server with camera

The server handles the core and the absolute positioning software running off the camera which publishes the robots' transforms.

On a laptop I run RVIZ and am able to visualize position and orientation of the robots.

Now what I would like to do is visualize other things like:

• walls
• objects
• objectives
• other data

I would like to visualize the walls (and floor) of the laboratory to get a decent picture, and I would really like a way to see the vectors I send the robots somehow or, having implemented a holonomic controller, I'd really like to see the control point move about in RVIZ to check if the robot is indeed doing what it's supposed to.

How can I achieve this? RVIZ seems limited in term of visualization, while GAZEBO seems suited for simulation but not visualization.

Any other option?

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Originally posted by Claudio on ROS Answers with karma: 859 on 2013-03-06

Post score: 0

Answer 1

There are a few options that you can look into:

• You can use some of the built-in rviz display types like the Path, Polygon or Pose displays for a lot of data (for example representing walls by polygon lines)
• Otherwise, the Marker display is intended for such tasks. It allows to easily use quite a few primitives and also supports displaying meshes (You could build arbitrary complex meshes using Blender and just display them as markers)
• If these options do not offer what you'd like to have, you always have the option to write your own rviz visualization plugin. Some good examples of such plugins are part of MoveIt (Link to plugins).

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Originally posted by Stefan Kohlbrecher with karma: 24361 on 2013-03-06

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 3