sensor_msgs

This package provides many messages and services relating to sensor devices.

Many of these messages were ported from ROS 1 and a lot of still-relevant documentation can be found through the ROS 1 sensor_msgs wiki.

For more information about ROS 2 interfaces, see docs.ros.org.

sensor_msgs c++ API

This package provides some common C++ functionality relating to manipulating a couple of particular sensor_msgs messages.

• fill_image.hpp: Fill a Image message from type-erased data pointer.
• image_encodings.hpp: Definitions and functionality relating to image encodings.
• point_cloud_conversion.hpp: Functionality for converting between the deprecated PointCloud and PointCloud2 messages.
• point_cloud2_iterator.hpp: Tools for modifying and parsing PointCloud2 messages.
• point_field_conversion.hpp: A type to enum mapping for the different PointField types, and methods to read and write in a PointCloud2 buffer for the different PointField types.

Messages (.msg)

• BatteryState: Describes the power state of the battery.
• CameraInfo: Meta information for a camera.
• ChannelFloat32: Holds optional data associated with each point in a PointCloud message.
• CompressedImage: A compressed image.
• FluidPressure: Single pressure reading for fluids (air, water, etc) like atmospheric and barometric pressures.
• Illuminance: Single photometric illuminance measurement.
• Image: An uncompressed image.
• Imu: Holds data from an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit).
• JointState: Holds data to describe the state of a set of torque controlled joints.
• JoyFeedbackArray: An array of JoyFeedback messages.
• JoyFeedback: Describes user feedback in a joystick, like an LED, rumble pad, or buzzer.
• Joy: Reports the state of a joystick’s axes and buttons.
• LaserEcho: A submessage of MultiEchoLaserScan and is not intended to be used separately.
• LaserScan: Single scan from a planar laser range-finder.
• MagneticField: Measurement of the Magnetic Field vector at a specific location.
• MultiDOFJointState: Representation of state for joints with multiple degrees of freedom, following the structure of JointState.
• MultiEchoLaserScan: Single scan from a multi-echo planar laser range-finder.
• NavSatFix: Navigation Satellite fix for any Global Navigation Satellite System.
• NavSatStatus: Navigation Satellite fix status for any Global Navigation Satellite System.
• PointCloud2: Holds a collection of N-dimensional points, which may contain additional information such as normals, intensity, etc.
• PointCloud: THIS MESSAGE IS DEPRECATED AS OF FOXY, use PointCloud2 instead
• PointField: Holds the description of one point entry in the PointCloud2 message format.
• Range: Single range reading from an active ranger that emits energy and reports one range reading that is valid along an arc at the distance measured.
• RegionOfInterest: Used to specify a region of interest within an image.
• RelativeHumidity: A single reading from a relative humidity sensor.
• Temperature: A single temperature reading.
• TimeReference: Measurement from an external time source not actively synchronized with the system clock.

Services (.srv)

• SetCameraInfo: Request that a camera stores the given CameraInfo as that camera’s calibration information.

Quality Declaration

This package claims to be in the Quality Level 1 category, see the Quality Declaration for more details.

Changelog for package sensor_msgs

5.7.0 (2025-05-19)

5.6.0 (2025-04-25)

5.5.0 (2025-03-20)

• Add NV12 to color formats (#253)
• Contributors: Lukas Schäper

5.4.2 (2024-11-20)

5.4.1 (2024-06-17)

5.4.0 (2024-04-26)

• Update quality declaration documents (#245)
• Contributors: Christophe Bedard

5.3.4 (2024-04-16)

5.3.3 (2024-04-10)

5.3.2 (2024-04-10)

• Clarify the license. (#241) In particular, every package in this repository is Apache 2.0 licensed except for sensor_msgs_py. So move the CONTRIBUTING.md and LICENSE files down into the individual packages, and make sure that sensor_msgs_py has the correct CONTRIBUTING.md file (it already had the correct LICENSE file).
• [J-Turtle] Fix uninitialized values in NavSatFix and add missing NavSatStatus UNKNOWN (#220)
  • Fix unitialized values in NavSatFix and add missing UNKNOWN
  • Fixes #196
  • Fix default initialization instead of constants

  * Define SERVICE_UNKNOWN Co-authored-by: Tully Foote <<tully.foote@gmail.com>> Co-authored-by: Martin Pecka <<peci1@seznam.cz>>

• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Ryan

5.3.1 (2024-03-28)

• Use target qualifier for checking the cpp typesupport exists (#238)
• Contributors: Ryan

5.3.0 (2024-01-24)

5.2.2 (2023-12-26)

• sensor_msgs/CompressedImage: updated description of format field (#231)
• Contributors: Kenji Brameld

5.2.1 (2023-11-06)

• Return true for isColor if format is YUYV or UYUV (#229)
• Contributors: Kenji Brameld

5.2.0 (2023-06-07)

5.1.0 (2023-04-27)

5.0.0 (2023-04-11)

• update YUV format codes and documentation (#214)
• sensor_msgs/Range lacks variance field (#181)
• Contributors: Christian Rauch, El Jawad Alaa

4.7.0 (2023-02-13)

• Update common_interfaces to C++17. (#215)
• [rolling] Update maintainers - 2022-11-07 (#210)
• Replaced non-ASCII dash symbol with ASCII dash (#208)
• Contributors: Audrow Nash, Chris Lalancette, Ivan Zatevakhin

4.6.1 (2022-11-02)

• Add NV21 and NV24 to colour formats (#205)
• Update BatteryState.msg (#206)
• Contributors: Borong Yuan, Geoffrey Biggs

4.6.0 (2022-09-13)

• use regex for matching cv types (#202)
• Fix outdated file path for image_encodings (#200)
• Use uint32_t for pointcloud2 resize method (#195)
• Retain width and height after resize for master (#193)
• Contributors: Kenji Brameld, Tianyu Li

4.5.0 (2022-05-19)

4.4.0 (2022-04-29)

4.3.0 (2022-04-29)

4.2.1 (2022-03-31)

• Move the find_package statements for BUILD_TESTING (#186)
• Contributors: Michael Jeronimo

4.2.0 (2022-03-30)

4.1.1 (2022-03-26)

• Feedback on conditional sensor_msgs_library target (#1) (#183)
• [Fix] Fix image_encodings.hpp's URL in README (#184)
• [Fix] Fix fill_image.hpp's URL in README (#182)
• Add sensor_msgs_library target and install headers to include/${PROJECT_NAME} (#178)
• Contributors: Homalozoa X, Pablo Garrido, Shane Loretz

4.1.0 (2022-03-01)

• Interface packages should fully <depend> on the interface packages that they depend on (#173)
• Add YUV420 and YUV444 to image encodings (#172)
• Contributors: Grey, Hemal Shah

4.0.0 (2021-12-14)

• Cleanup mislabeled BSD license (#83)
• Update maintainers to Geoffrey Biggs and Tully Foote (#163)
• Fix rosdoc2 warnings in sensor_msgs. (#162)
• Add equidistant distortion model (#160)
• Contributors: Audrow Nash, Chris Lalancette, Martin Günther, Tully Foote

3.0.0 (2021-08-24)

2.3.0 (2021-08-11)

• Use rosidl_get_typesupport_target() (#156)
• Update CompressedImage documentation: add 'tiff' as a supported format (#154)
• Contributors: Ivan Santiago Paunovic, Shane Loretz

2.2.3 (2021-04-27)

2.2.2 (2021-04-06)

• Change index.ros.org -> docs.ros.org. (#149)
• updating quality declaration links (re: ros2/docs.ros2.org#52) (#145)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, shonigmann

2.2.1 (2021-01-25)

• Fix PointCloud2Iterator namespacing in docs (#139)
• Contributors: Andre Nguyen

2.2.0 (2020-12-10)

• Add coverage/performance to qd for sensor_msgs (#137)
• Update QDs to QL 1 (#135)
• Update package maintainers. (#132)
• Updated Quality Level to 2 (#131)
• Contributors: Alejandro Hernández Cordero, Michel Hidalgo, Stephen Brawner

2.1.0 (2020-07-21)

2.0.2 (2020-07-21)

• Missing cstring header for memcpy in fill_image.hpp (#126)
• Update Quality levels to level 3 (#124)
• Add Security Vulnerability Policy pointing to REP-2006. (#120)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Jose Luis Rivero, brawner

2.0.1 (2020-05-26)

• QD Update Version Stability to stable version (#121)
• Contributors: Alejandro Hernández Cordero

1.0.0 (2020-05-20)

• Improve clarification of MultiDOFJointState (#114)
• Comment on common PointField names (#112)
• Fix sensor_msgs README (#111)
• Add current-level quality declarations (#109)
• Contributors: Tully Foote, brawner