rtabmap_ros/rtabmap_sync

rtabmap_sync

Synchronization of the sensor topics RTAB-Map consumes.

A SLAM node needs a camera's color image, its depth image and its calibration as one measurement, not as three topics that happen to be arriving. This package does that matching — once, in one place — and offers it in two forms: standalone nodes that pack a camera into a single RGBDImage, and a base class that the consuming nodes subscribe through.

Every node is a composable node as well as a standalone executable. Compose these into the camera driver's process where you can: they copy every pixel of every frame, and across a process boundary that copy is a serialization plus a memcpy per image.

Nodes

One page per node.

Node	Description
rgbd_sync	Color + depth + calibration → one RGBDImage.
stereo_sync	Left + right + two calibrations → one RGBDImage.
rgb_sync	Color + calibration → one RGBDImage, with no depth.
rgbdx_sync	2 to 8 RGBDImage topics → one RGBDImages.

Library

The package also installs a C++ library, whose API is documented in the C++ API reference generated from the headers.

CommonDataSubscriber is the piece worth knowing about. RTAB-Map can be fed in a dozen shapes — RGB-D, stereo, RGB-only, one or several RGBDImages, a 2D or 3D scan, a whole SensorData — each optionally alongside odometry, an OdomInfo and user data. Every combination needs its own message_filters synchronizer, so a node that wired them by hand would be mostly synchronizer boilerplate. This class owns all of them: it reads the subscribe_* parameters, builds the one synchronizer that matches, and calls back with a uniform set of arguments whichever inputs were used.

rtabmap_slam's rtabmap node and rtabmap_viz both derive from it, which is why they take identical input topics and parameters. If you are looking for where subscribe_depth or rgbd_cameras is implemented, it is here rather than in those packages.

SyncDiagnostic is what every node here reports through. It watches two rates — messages going into a synchronizer, and messages coming out — because a node can be receiving everything it asked for and still publish nothing. One camera lagging is enough to stop a synchronizer emitting, and only the pair of rates tells that apart from a camera that went silent.

Conventions

A few things recur across these nodes, and across the subscribe_* interface of rtabmap and rtabmap_viz.

approx_sync. Inputs are either matched by nearest stamp or required to carry identical ones. Prefer the exact policy wherever the sensor allows it: it is cheaper and cannot mismatch. Its failure mode is unforgiving, though — stamps a nanosecond apart mean nothing is ever published and nothing says why, which is the most common reason a pipeline built on this package is silent.

Which one is the default follows the sensor. stereo_sync and rgb_sync default to exact, because a stereo pair is hardware-triggered and a camera publisher sends the image and its camera_info together. rgbd_sync and rgbdx_sync default to approximate, for backward compatibility with the many RGB-D cameras that do not stamp color and depth identically.

approx_sync_max_interval. Approximate matching pairs whatever it has if that is the best available, so a camera that stalls and resumes produces one pairing of a fresh frame with a stale one, silently. This rejects a set spanning more than a given number of seconds. It defaults to 0 (disabled), and it is worth setting — roughly a tenth of the frame period.

qos. An integer selecting the reliability of the subscriptions: 0 system default, 1 reliable, 2 best effort. It has to be compatible with the publisher or no messages arrive at all, with nothing said. Sensor drivers commonly publish images best effort and camera_info reliable, which is why qos_camera_info can be set apart from qos.

topic_queue_size and sync_queue_size. The first is the depth of each individual subscription, the second the depth of the synchronizer's own buffer. Raise sync_queue_size when inputs arrive at different rates or with different delays; raise topic_queue_size when one input arrives in bursts. The older queue_size parameter is deprecated and copied into sync_queue_size.

Compressed output. rgbd_sync, stereo_sync and rgb_sync each publish a second topic carrying the same frame with compressed images, for sending over a slow link. Color is JPEG; depth is PNG, because JPEG artifacts in a depth image are not blur, they are invented geometry. Neither output is produced unless it has a subscriber, and compressed_rate caps the compressed one without touching the raw one.

Build options

Two synchronizer families are behind CMake options, off by default, because each multiplies the number of templates the package instantiates — and so its build time and its binary size.

Option	Default	Effect
RTABMAP_SYNC_MULTI_RGBD	OFF	Lets a CommonDataSubscriber consumer synchronize 2 to 6 RGBDImage topics itself (rgbd_cameras > 1).
RTABMAP_SYNC_USER_DATA	OFF	Lets subscribe_user_data add a UserData topic to any of the combinations.

colcon build --packages-select rtabmap_sync --cmake-args -DRTABMAP_SYNC_MULTI_RGBD=ON

For several cameras, prefer turning RTABMAP_SYNC_MULTI_RGBD on. The consumer then subscribes to each camera's RGBDImage directly and synchronizes them itself, which is one node and one full-frame copy per camera per frame less than routing everything through rgbdx_sync on the way in.

rgbdx_sync is the route that needs no rebuild — against binary packages, say — and the only one that goes past 6 cameras. See Feeding it to rtabmap.

Without the options, asking for either is refused rather than ignored quietly — subscribe_user_data is reset to false with an error, and rgbd_cameras > 1 leaves nothing subscribed and says so.

Building and testing

colcon build --packages-select rtabmap_sync
colcon test --packages-select rtabmap_sync
colcon test-result --verbose

The tests drive each node over real ROS topics inside the gtest binary — no launch files and no separate processes — so they also serve as worked examples of each node's topics and parameters.

License

BSD-3-Clause. See the repository root.