TF2 Pose Tracker Plugin

Source code on GitHub.

This plugin provides the ability to perform periodic lookups on the transform tree of a ROS system, updating the fact-base accordingly.

Configuration

• spin_thread: | Type | Default | |——–|———–| | bool | true |

  Description

  When set to true, this creates a new node that handles the transform listener, otherwise the main CLIPS manager node handles the subscription in a new callback group.

Features

Facts

; Asserted and modified by the periodic lookup started with tf2-start-periodic-lookup.
(deftemplate tf2-tracked-pose
  (slot parent (type STRING))
  (slot child (type STRING))
  (slot stamp (type FLOAT))
  (multislot translation (type FLOAT) (cardinality 3 3))
  (multislot rotation (type FLOAT) (cardinality 4 4))
  (slot timer (type EXTERNAL-ADDRESS))
)

Functions

; Start a ROS timer to periodically lookup the pose of ?child-frame relative to ?parent-frame.
; Returns TRUE if timer was created successfully, FALSE otherwise.
(tf2-start-periodic-lookup ?parent-frame ?child-frame ?frequency-hz)   ; example-args: "map" "base_link" 2.0
; Stop a started ROS timer using the timer of the associated tf2-tracked-pose fact.
(tf2-stop-periodic-lookup ?timer-ptr) ; example args: <Pointer-C-0x7f1550001d20>

Usage Example

This plugin is discussed in more depth in the Writing a Plugin for TF Monitoring Tutorial

A minimal working example is provided by the cx_tutorial_agents package. It requires the turtlesim package, which provides a minimal simulation environment to interact with and the turtle_tf2_py package to obtain transforms from the simulation.

Open a terminal and start the tf2 turtlesim demo:

ros2 launch turtle_tf2_py turtle_tf2_demo.launch.py

In a second terminal run the example setup for the plugin:

ros2 launch cx_bringup cx_launch.py manager_config:=tf2_tracked_pose.yaml package:=cx_tutorial_agents

It will track the pose of turtle1 with a frequency of 0.2 hz and stop the tracking after 5 updates.

Optionally, open a third terminal to control the turtle:

ros2 run turtlesim turtle_teleop_key

Configuration

File cx_tutorial_agents/params/tf2_tracked_pose.yaml.

/**:
  ros__parameters:
    autostart_node: true
    environments: ["tf2_pose_tracker_turtlebot"]

    tf2_pose_tracker_turtlebot:
      plugins: ["executive", "tf2_pose_tracker", "files"]
      log_clips_to_file: true
      watch: ["facts", "rules"]

    executive:
      plugin: "cx::ExecutivePlugin"

    tf2_pose_tracker:
      plugin: "cx::Tf2PoseTrackerPlugin"

    files:
      plugin: "cx::FileLoadPlugin"
      pkg_share_dirs: ["cx_tutorial_agents"]
      load: ["clips/tf2_tracked_pose.clp"]

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Changelog for package cx_tf2_pose_tracker_plugin

0.1.3 (2025-08-06)

• 0.1.3
• Contributors: Tarik Viehmann

0.1.2 (2025-07-16)

0.1.1 (2025-07-11)

• project: prepare for first ros2 release
• Contributors: Tarik Viehmann