ROS X Introspection

Unified successor of the following libraries:

• ros_type_introspection
• ros_msg_parser
• ros2_introspection

The library compiles either using:

• ROS1 (catkin),
• ROS2 (colcon/ament) or
• without any ROS dependency (vanilla cmake).

To parse any ROS message at runtime, it requires:

• The name of the type (for instance “sensors_msgs/JointState”)
• The definition of the type (for instance this one),
• The raw memory buffer to be deserialized into individual key/values pairs.

The raw memory buffer is usually obtained by:

• rosbag::MessageInstance and Topic::ShapeShifter in ROS1.
• GenericSubscriber or rosbag2_storage::SerializedBagMessage on ROS2.
• MCAP.

Python binding

Compilation instructions:

cmake -S. -B build_python -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DROSX_PYTHON_BINDINGS=ON
cmake --build build_python

If you have a rosbag (MCAP file) you can test it with this command

PYTHONPATH=build_python/python python3 python/mcap_ros_parser.py path_to_your_rosbag.mcap

Note that we are providing the folder where the dynamic library is using PYTHONPATH.