rtabmap_ros/rtabmap_util/doc/rgbd_split.md

rgbd_split

Splits an rtabmap_msgs/msg/RGBDImage back into the standard ROS image topics.

RGBDImage bundles color, depth and both camera infos into one message so they arrive together, which is what RTAB-Map wants. Everything else in the ROS ecosystem — RViz, image_view, depth_image_proc — expects separate Image and CameraInfo topics. This node unpacks the bundle for them.

It is the inverse of rtabmap_sync's rgbd_sync, and of its stereo_sync when stereo is set — those two are what produce an RGBDImage in the first place.

Usage

ros2 run rtabmap_util rgbd_split --ros-args -r rgbd_image:=/camera/rgbd_image

ComposableNode(
    package='rtabmap_util',
    plugin='rtabmap_util::RGBDSplit',
    name='rgbd_split',
    remappings=[('rgbd_image', '/camera/rgbd_image')])

Subscribed Topics

Topic	Type	Description
rgbd_image	rtabmap_msgs/msg/RGBDImage	Queue depth queue_sub, 5 by default. Raw or compressed images are both accepted.

Published Topics

The output topics are named after the resolved input topic, so remapping rgbd_image moves the outputs with it. With rgbd_image remapped to /camera/rgbd_image they are /camera/rgbd_image/rgb/image and so on. Setting stereo: true renames the two halves left and right, see Stereo messages.

Topic	Type	Description
<rgbd_image>/rgb/image	sensor_msgs/msg/Image	The color image, decompressed if needed.
<rgbd_image>/rgb/camera_info	sensor_msgs/msg/CameraInfo
<rgbd_image>/depth/image	sensor_msgs/msg/Image	The depth image, or the right image of a stereo pair.
<rgbd_image>/depth/camera_info	sensor_msgs/msg/CameraInfo	For a stereo pair this is the right camera, and its P(0,3) carries the baseline.

Each half is only unpacked if something is subscribed to it, so subscribing to color alone does not pay for depth decompression.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
qos	int	0	Reliability of both sides: 0 system default, 1 reliable, 2 best effort.
qos_sub	int	value of qos	Reliability of the rgbd_image subscription alone.
qos_pub	int	value of qos	Reliability of the four output publishers alone.
queue_sub	int	5	Queue depth of the rgbd_image subscription. Must be at least 1.
queue_pub	int	1	Queue depth of every publisher. Must be at least 1.
stereo	bool	false	Name the outputs left/right instead of rgb/depth. See Stereo messages.

Stereo messages

The node handles stereo RGBDImage messages as well as RGB-D ones. In a stereo message the "depth" slot holds the right image, and the second camera info carries the baseline; the depth topics then carry the right camera, correctly typed as mono8 or bgr8 rather than mislabeled as depth.

That works, but the topic names lie. Set stereo: true and the outputs are named for what they hold:

stereo	Output topics
false (default)	<rgbd_image>/rgb/image, <rgbd_image>/rgb/camera_info, <rgbd_image>/depth/image, <rgbd_image>/depth/camera_info
true	<rgbd_image>/left/image, <rgbd_image>/left/camera_info, <rgbd_image>/right/image, <rgbd_image>/right/camera_info

ros2 run rtabmap_util rgbd_split --ros-args \
  -r rgbd_image:=/camera/rgbd_image \
  -p stereo:=true

Only the names change — the message contents and the order of the two halves are the same either way, so the rgb slot always becomes the left image. The two namings are exclusive: with stereo: true nothing is published on rgb/depth.

The node checks the setting against what actually arrives, going by the encoding of the second half: 16UC1, 32FC1 and mono16 are depth, anything else is an image. If the two disagree it logs a warning once and keeps forwarding — a mismatch makes the topic name misleading, not the data wrong, so it is never worth dropping a frame over.

Notes

If a message has no frame_id on one of its sub-messages, the node fills it in from the other one so the output is always usable by TF.