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