RosGzPointCloud Not Loading

[BobbieZain]

Environment

• OS Version: Ubuntu 22.04
• Binary build: ROS2 Humble 2.5.5-1jammy.20240404.154053| Gazebo Fortress 6.16.0

Description

• Expected behavior: The depth image can be seen in image display
• Actual behavior: The image display cannot be dropped down and the plugin is not correctly loaded

Steps to reproduce

1.Go to ros_gz_point_cloud/examples
2.Run ign gazebo -r examples/depth_camera.sdf

Output

Error message:
[Err] [SystemLoader.cc:94] Failed to load system plugin [RosGzPointCloud] : couldn't find shared library.
Screenshot:

[BobbieZain]

Hello, do I need to install the RosGzPointCloud library? If so, how?

[azeey]

The PointCloud plugin is unfortunately in a broken state right now. There's a COLCON_IGNORE file in the package.

A workaround for this is to use ros_gz_bridge to bridge point cloud messages from Gazebo to ROS. Here is an example.

[DanielBar98]

Are there any updates on this?

[caguero]

We're looking into an alternative, stay tuned for news soon.

[SuperJappie08]

I attempted to get this working on ROS Jazzy with Gazebo Harmonic, which I also mentioned in #360.

Here is the same comment, since it might also apply:

I attempted to port this for ROS Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic. (Because it looked useful and doable, and I wanted more about Gazebo)

However, even after converting it to a rendering plugin, the performance improvements gazebosim/gz-sensors#447 and gazebosim/gz-sensors#413, it is no longer possible to get data via the renderer directly without subscribing to the (gazebo) topic.
(Unless there is a way to retrieve and attach to the gz::sensor object directly, which I was unable to find)

(My branch lives here, although not functioning as expected SuperJappie08/ros_gz jazzy-point-cloud)

[catarinalopes21]

Have you found an alternative for this? I am simulating a depth camera using ROS Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic and wanted to obtain the simulation of the point cloud too and tried to bridge the point cloud messages from Gazebo to ROS but it is not working. An image is being produced both in rviz and terminal but the point cloud is not showing any data.

[SuperJappie08]

@catarinalopes21, it should work with the normal bridge, you might need to use a special gazebo type (Pointcloud packed).

I've linked to the bridge demo, which also does this

ros_gz/ros_gz_sim_demos/launch/rgbd_camera_bridge.launch.py

Line 64 in ef1a14e

'/rgbd_camera/points@sensor_msgs/msg/PointCloud2@gz.msgs.PointCloudPacked'