3D visualization

There are certain devices (such as stereo cameras, 3D lasers, the Kinect sensor, and so on) that provide 3D data—usually in the form of point clouds (organized/ordered or not). For this reason, it is extremely useful to have tools that visualize this type of data. In ROS, we have rviz or rqt_rviz, which integrates an OpenGL interface with a 3D world that represents sensor data in a world representation, using the frame of the sensor that reads the measurements in order to draw such readings in the correct position with respect to each other.

Visualizing data in a 3D world using rqt_rviz

With roscore running, start rqt_rviz with (note that rviz is still valid in ROS hydro):

$ rosrun rqt_rviz rqt_rviz

We will see the graphical interface of the following screenshot, which has a simple layout:

On the left-hand side, we have the Displays panel, in which we have a tree list of the different elements in the world, which appears in the middle. In this case, we have certain elements...