Transforms

Coordinate frames transforms through time and space

Features

Transforms offers the ability to transform the coordinates of a 3D point with timestamp, from one reference frame to another.

Background

The robotics field needs coordinate frame transforms, for example for lidar data, GPS data and many other sources. On top of that, it usually has tight performance constraints. Combine these two and one quickly would need a performant coordinates transform such that data can be processed from the same reference frame, most often at the robot's center of gravity.

This library draws inspiration from ROS2 and the TF2 package.

Usage

This library exposes the add_transform, get_transform and await_transform for the Registry type. Beyond this one can create transforms using the Transform type. Please see the examples for more details.

Documentation

Please consult the cargo doc for more detailed information.

cargo doc --open

Examples

For example usage see the included examples. They provide an example usage for a sync and a tokio-based async version of the library.

The recommended usage is to use the async version. This allows one to efficiently await for incoming transforms using the notify() system and does not require any polling.

 cargo run --example async_await --features async

For a barebones usage of the library one can opt for the sync version of the library.

 cargo run --example sync_minimal

or

 cargo run --example sync_polling

Installation

In your project run:

cargo add transforms --features async

or

cargo add transforms

Notes

It is a requirement that the point's timestamp falls within or exactly on the timestamps of known reference frames. For instance, given two reference frames R1 and R2 with known transforms at T=0 and T=10 each, then transformations are possible for points with timestamps in the range T=[0,10], inclusive. Linear interpolation is used for timestamps between known transforms. This approach ensures accurate transformations within the defined time range.

Limitations

There are a few constraints that this system adheres to. Primarily to keep the system precise and minimal.

Linear Interpolation Only

This library will only linearly interpolate between coordinate frames and timestamps. There will be no polynomial curve fitting or any other forms of more advanced estimation methods. This is to keep the system simple and performant. If you want more precise transforms then feel free to register more transforms with a finer delta time. After all, the inaccuracies only arise when there are large time gaps between known transforms.

No Extrapolation

Extrapolation is potentially dangerous and/or unstable. One can argue that linear extrapolation or zero-order-hold extrapolation is still acceptable and perfectly fine to use. This system refuses to do it as it opens up the discussion of "How far of extrapolation should we allow?", "Let the user configure extrapolation..." and many other edge-case discussions that lead to unessecary complexity, discussion and behavior unpredicability. If you really want extrapolation, then you are free to publish a transform into the future and let this library "interpolate" within that.

Reference Frame names have to be unique within the whole transform tree

If you run into an issue regarding this, consider using prefixes to group your reference frames

No direct 1-to-1 equivelance to ROS2's TF2 library

This library is inspired by the TF2 library but makes no promise of matching its features, API or implementation. It's by inspiration only.

Known Issues

The known issues that will be fixed in future releases:

• Circular reference check, currently a circular reference will cause an infinite loop. Don't create one.
• ... to be determined

Roadmap

• v0.1 Exploration of the domain, provide functionality, built for purpose, open for feature requests

• v0.2 Debugging tools, ROS2 interoperability

Note

Everything said above is up for change and this crate is still very much a WIP.