Mechanism of ROS static_transform_publisher in tf package

Mechanism of ROS static_transform_publisher in tf package

1. ROS documentation

In Section 6.3 of ROS tf documentation, it says that,

static_transform_publisher x y z yaw pitch roll frame_id child_frame_id period_in_ms

• Publish a static coordinate transform to tf using an x/y/z offset in meters and yaw/pitch/roll in radians. (yaw is rotation about Z, pitch is rotation about Y, and roll is rotation about X). The period, in milliseconds, specifies how often to send a transform. 100ms (10hz) is a good value.

static_transform_publisher x y z qx qy qz qw frame_id child_frame_id period_in_ms

• Publish a static coordinate transform to tf using an x/y/z offset in meters and quaternion. The period, in milliseconds, specifies how often to send a transform. 100ms (10hz) is a good value.

static_transform_publisher is designed both as a command-line tool for manual use, as well as for use within roslaunch files for setting static transforms. For example:

   1 <launch>
   2 <node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="link1_broadcaster" args="1 0 0 0 0 0 1 link1_parent link1 100" />
   3 </launch>

However, the question is that how does it transform a point. The document hardly mentions this point. This blog

2. Assumptions and Experiments

Arguments in ROS documents is args="1 0 0 0 0 0 1 link1_parent link1 100" which is too simple to find its mechanism.

2.1 Assumption 1

A most common formulation for the Rotation-translation (Rt for short) transformation can be formulated as follows,
$$p_2=\mathbf{R}{p}_1+t,$$
where, the 31 point $p_1$ is project to the 31 point $p_2$.