Attention

As of June 30, 2025, the Isaac ROS Buildfarm for Isaac ROS 2.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal is no longer supported.

Due to an isolated infrastructure event, all ROS 2 Humble Debian packages that were previously built for Ubuntu 20.04 are no longer available in the Isaac Apt Repository. All artifacts for Isaac ROS 3.0 and later are built and maintained with a more robust pipeline.

Users are encouraged to migrate to the latest version of Isaac ROS. The source code for Isaac ROS 2.1 continues to be available on the release-2.1 branches of the Isaac ROS GitHub repositories.

The original documentation for Isaac ROS 2.1 is preserved below.

isaac_ros_pointcloud_utils

Source code on GitHub.

Overview

The ROS nodes in this package allows for sensor_msgs::msg::PointCloud2 and sensor_msgs::msg::LaserScan to be converted to isaac_ros_pointcloud_interfaces::msg::FlatScan which can then be used with the isaac_ros_occupancy_grid_localizer.

API

Isaac ROS PointCloud to FlatScan

Usage

ros2 launch isaac_ros_pointcloud_utils isaac_ros_pointcloud_to_flatscan.launch.py

ROS Parameters

ROS Parameter	Type	Default	Description
threshold_x_axis	bool	false	Enable X Axis Threshold
threshold_y_axis	bool	false	Enable Y Axis Threshold
min_x	double	-1.0	Min X axis threshold
max_x	double	1.0	Max X axis threshold
min_y	double	-1.0	Min Y axis threshold
max_y	double	1.0	Max Y axis threshold
min_z	double	-0.1	Min Z axis threshold
max_z	double	0.1	Max Z axis threshold
max_points	int	150000	Maximum number of 3D points in input Point Cloud used to pre allocate GPU memory

ROS Topics Subscribed

ROS Topic	Type	Description
pointcloud	sensor_msgs::msg::PointCloud2	Input Point Cloud

ROS Topics Published

ROS Topic	Type	Description
flatscan	isaac_ros_pointcloud_interfaces::msg::FlatScan	Output Flat Scan

Isaac ROS LaserScan to FlatScan

Usage

ros2 launch isaac_ros_pointcloud_utils isaac_ros_laserscan_to_flatscan.launch.py

ROS Topics Subscribed

ROS Topic	Type	Description
scan	sensor_msgs::msg::LaserScan	Input LaserScan

ROS Topics Published

ROS Topic	Type	Description
flatscan	isaac_ros_pointcloud_interfaces::msg::FlatScan	Output Flat Scan

Isaac ROS FlatScan to LaserScan

Usage

ros2 launch isaac_ros_pointcloud_utils isaac_ros_flatscan_to_laserscan.launch.py

ROS Parameters

ROS Parameter	Type	Default	Description
angle_min	double	0.0	The starting angle of the generated LaserScan
angle_max	double	2 * M_PI	The ending angle of the generated LaserScan
angle_increment	double	M_PI / 180	The angle increment per LaserScan reading
time_increment	double	0.0001	The time increment per LaserScan reading
max_range_fallback	double	200.0	If the Max Range of the input FlatScan == 0, then this parameter is used to populate ‘Max Range’ field of the output LaserScan.

ROS Topics Subscribed

flatscan

isaac_ros_pointcloud_interfaces::msg::FlatScan

Input Flat Scan

ROS Topics Published

ROS Topic	Type	Description
scan	sensor_msgs::msg::LaserScan	Input LaserScan