Using Mapping with VLP16-Hires - Missing TF velodyne

[tu-darmstadt-ros-pkg]

Using Mapping with VLP16-Hires - Missing TF velodyne

[aybakana]

When I first used VLP16 on ROS, I used the command below but I couldnt see the point cloud.
rosrun rviz rviz
So I saw that in the tutorials, they use the command below and then velodyne frame comes out.
rosrun rviz rviz -f velodyne
If you are using roslaunch, you can try adding "-f velodyne" as arguments like below.
<node pkg="rviz" type="rviz" name="rviz" args="-f velodyne"/>

[strecksen]

Hi Kevin, I had the same problem.
Based on https://answers.ros.org/question/53611/hector_mapping-base_link-laser-transform-times-out-once/ and https://answers.ros.org/question/234365/hector_slam-not-working-with-my-bag-file/
I suggest to add in your launch file
<node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="base_footprint_2_velodyne" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 /base_footprint /velodyne 10"/>
If it fails, try to replace base_footprint through base_link or base_frame.

[karry3775]

Hey Kevin I am also currently working on VLP 16 Hi Res, and using ROS Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04.03.
I am following the ROS wiki tutorials to visualize the data.
Link: http://wiki.ros.org/velodyne/Tutorials/Getting%20Started%20with%20the%20Velodyne%20VLP16
However I am not able to get any data when I hit
rostopic echo /velodyne_points
And thus also not able to visualize any data on rviz.
It will be really great if you can help me with this.
Thank you!

--Kartik