In hybrid setups with multiple hardware drivers, we usually use a combination
of joint_state_publisher and robot_state_publisher to publish transforms.
joint_state_publisher takes care of merging the different joint_state
topics, and robot_state_publisher computes the forward kinematics and
publishes tf transforms.
However, both joint_state_publisher and robot_state_publisher operate with
fixed rates, introducing latency. If you need transforms fast, this is
undesirable.
This node combines the effect of both nodes and does not use a fixed update
rate. Instead, multiple sensor_msgs/JointState sources can be specified, each
with a rate limit. Whenever a joint state message is received, the
corresponding transforms are updated and sent out.
Example launch file:
<node name="state_pub" pkg="smart_state_publisher" type="smart_state_publisher" respawn="true">
<rosparam>
# Set to true to get latency information printed
diagnostics: false
# Set to true to send out updates for *all* tfs for
# every received joint state message. This is very inefficient,
# but allows quick prototyping if not all joint state sources
# are online.
publish_all_joints: false
# List of joint state sources
sources:
- topic: right/joint_states
# Rate limit in Hz
rate: 100.0
- topic: left/joint_states
rate: 100.0
- topic: head/joint_states
rate: 0.0
- topic: /anna/left/sih/joint_states
- topic: /anna/svh_controller/channel_feedback_tuned
- topic: /anna/atlas_spine/joint_states
</rosparam>
</node>