List of ROS Topics#

This page list all the topics exposed by the SDK 23.12.

Caution

Only the topics contributing to the public API of the pal-sdk-23.12 are listed here.

Additional ROS topics might be present on the robot, for internal purposes. They are however not part of the documented and supported robot API.

Alphabetic index#

By capability#

Developing applications #

/intents (documentation) An intent, encoding a desired activity to be scheduled by the robot (not to be confused by the chatbot intents). Read more about Intents.

Expressive interactions #

/left_eye (documentation) The image to be displayed on the left eye of the robot.
/look_at (documentation) Set a target for the robot to look at. Uses both the eyes and the head position.
/look_at_with_style (documentation) Set a target for the robot to look at, while letting you configure how the gaze will be performed.
/right_eye (documentation) The image to be displayed on the left eye of the robot.
/robot_face (documentation) The left and right images to be displayed on the robot’s eyes. Published by default by the expressive_eyes node. If you want to publish your own face on this topic, you might want to first stop the
/robot_face/expression (documentation) Set the expression of ARI eyes. See Robot face and expressions for details.
/robot_face/background_image (documentation) Displays a ROS video stream as background of the robot’s face/eyes. See Background and overlays for details.
/robot_face/look_at (documentation) Sets the direction of eyes. If you want to control the gaze direction, use instead /look_at. See Controlling the attention and gaze of the robot for details.

Robot hardware #

/audio/channel0 (documentation) Merged audio channel of the ReSpeaker’s 4 microphones
/audio/channel1 (documentation) Audio stream from the ReSpeaker’s first microphone.
/audio/channel2 (documentation) Audio stream from the ReSpeaker’s second microphone.
/audio/channel3 (documentation) Audio stream from the ReSpeaker’s third microphone.
/audio/channel4 (documentation) Audio stream from the ReSpeaker’s fourth microphone.
/audio/channel5 (documentation) Monitor audio stream from the ReSpeaker’s audio input (used for self-echo cancellation).
/audio/raw (documentation) Merged audio channel of the ReSpeaker’s 4 microphones (alias for /audio/channel0).
/audio/sound_direction (documentation) The estimated Direction of Arrival of the detected sound.
/audio/sound_localization (documentation) The estimated sound source location.
/audio/speech (documentation) Raw audio data of detected speech (published once the person has finished speaking).
/audio/status_led (documentation) The topic controlling the reSpeaker microphone LEDs. Do not use this topic directly. Instead, use /pal_led_manager/do_effect.
/audio/voice_detected (documentation) Publishes a boolean indicating if a voice is currently detected (ie, whether someone is currently speaking)
/head_front_camera/color/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata
/head_front_camera/color/image_raw/* (documentation) Color rectified image. RGB format
/head_front_camera/image_throttle/compressed (documentation) Compressed head image.
/joint_states (documentation) The current state of the robot’s joints (eg angular position of each joint).
/joint_torque_states (documentation) The current state of the robot’s joints with effort indicating the measured torque instead of the current (eg angular position of each joint).
/mobile_base_controller/cmd_vel (documentation) Set the desired linear and angular velocity of the robot (in meters per second).
/scan (documentation) Laser scan readings of ARI’s back LIDAR.
/torso_back_camera/fisheye1/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata (fisheye2)
/torso_back_camera/fisheye1/image_raw/* (documentation) Fisheye image
/torso_back_camera/fisheye2/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata (fisheye2)
/torso_back_camera/fisheye2/image_raw/* (documentation) Fisheye image (
/torso_front_camera/aligned_depth_to_color/camera_info (documentation) Intrinsics parameters of the aligned dept to color image
/torso_front_camera/aligned_depth_to_color/image_raw/* (documentation) Aligned depth to color image
/torso_front_camera/color/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata
/torso_front_camera/color/image_raw/* (documentation) Color rectified image. RGB format
/torso_front_camera/depth/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata
/torso_front_camera/depth/color/points (documentation) Registered XYZRGB point cloud.
/torso_front_camera/depth/image_rect_raw/* (documentation) Rectified depth image
/torso_front_camera/infra1/camera_info (documentation) Camera calibration and metadata (infra1 and infra2)
/torso_front_camera/infra1/image_rect_raw/* (documentation) Raw uint16 IR image
/torso_front_camera/infra2/image_rect_raw/compressed (documentation)
/base_imu (documentation) Inertial data from the IMU.
/sonar_base (documentation) Readings of the sonar.
/xtion/depth_registered/camera_info (documentation) Intrinsic parameters of the depth image.
/xtion/depth_registered/image_raw (documentation) 32-bit depth image. Every pixel contains the depth of the corresponding point in meters.
/xtion/depth_registered/points (documentation) Point cloud computed from the depth image.
/xtion/rgb/camera_info (documentation) Intrinsic and distortion parameters of the RGB camera.
/xtion/rgb/image_raw (documentation) RGB image.
/xtion/rgb/image_rect_color (documentation) Rectified RGB image.
/wrist_ft (documentation) Force and torque vectors currently detected by the Force/Torque sensor.

Robot management #

/diagnostics (documentation)
/diagnostics_agg (documentation)
/interaction_logger (documentation) Logs arbitrary strings to a CSV file. See How-to: Log and retrieve data from the robot for details.
/interaction_profile_manager/parameter_updates (documentation)
/power_status (documentation)
/power/battery_level (documentation)
/power/is_charging (documentation)
/power/is_docked (documentation)
/power/is_emergency (documentation)
/power/is_plugged (documentation)

Gestures and motions #

/arm_left_controller/command (documentation)
/arm_left_controller/safe_command (documentation)
/arm_right_controller/command (documentation)
/arm_right_controller/safe_command (documentation)
/hand_left_controller/command (documentation)
/hand_right_controller/command (documentation)
/head_controller/command (documentation)

Knowledge and reasoning #

/kb/add_fact (documentation) Statements published to this topic are added to the knowledge base. The string must represent a <s, p, o> triple, with terms separated by a space. See KnowledgeCore documentation for details.
/kb/events/* (documentation) Event notifications for previously subscribed events. See /kb/events.
/kb/remove_fact (documentation) Statements published to this topic are removed from the knowledge base. The string must represent a <s, p, o> triple, with terms separated by a space. See KnowledgeCore documentation for details.

Social perception #

/hri_face_detect/ready (documentation) A semaphore topic: True is published when the node is ready.
/hri_face_identification/ready (documentation) A semaphore topic: True is published when the node is ready.
/humans/bodies/*/cropped (documentation) The cropped image of the detected body.
/humans/bodies/*/joint_states (documentation) For each detect human body, the joint state of the person’s skeleton.
/humans/bodies/*/position (documentation)
/humans/bodies/*/roi (documentation) Region of the whole body in the source image
/humans/bodies/*/skeleton2d (documentation) The 2D points of the the detected skeleton, in the image space
/humans/bodies/*/velocity (documentation)
/humans/bodies/tracked (documentation) The list of bodies currently seen by the robot.
/humans/candidate_matches (documentation) Potential matches (eg, associations) between detected faces, bodies, voices and persons.
/humans/faces/*/aligned (documentation) Aligned (eg, the two eyes are horizontally aligned) version of the cropped face, with same resolution as /humans/faces/*/cropped.
/humans/faces/*/cropped (documentation) Cropped face image, if necessary scaled, centered and 0-padded to match the /humans/faces/width and /humans/faces/height ROS parameters.
/humans/faces/*/landmarks (documentation) 2D facial landmarks extracted from the face
/humans/faces/*/roi (documentation) Region of the face in the source image
/humans/faces/tracked (documentation) The list of faces currently seen by the robot.
/humans/persons/*/alias (documentation) If this person has been merged with another, this topic contains the person ID of the new person
/humans/persons/*/anonymous (documentation) If true, the person is anonymous, ie has not yet been identified, and has not been issued a permanent ID. Latched topic.
/humans/persons/*/body_id (documentation) Body matched to that person (if any). Latched topic.
/humans/persons/*/engagement_status (documentation) Engagement status of the person with the robot.
/humans/persons/*/face_id (documentation) Face matched to that person (if any). Latched topic.
/humans/persons/*/location_confidence (documentation) Location confidence; 1 means person currently seen, 0 means person location unknown. See REP-155 Person Frame section for details.
/humans/persons/*/voice_id (documentation) Voice matched to that person (if any). Latched topic.
/humans/persons/known (documentation) The list of all the persons known by the robot, eithr currently seen or not.
/humans/persons/tracked (documentation) The list of persons currently seen by the robot.

Speech and language processing #

/active_listening (documentation) Whether or not recognized speech should be further processed (eg by the chatbot). See Dialogue management for details.
/chatbot/trigger (documentation) Publish here chatbot intents you want to trigger. This is espectially useful to implement a pro-active behaviour, where the robot starts itself the conversation.

See Dialogue management for details.
/humans/voices/*/audio (documentation) The audio stream of the voice.
/humans/voices/*/is_speaking (documentation) Whether verbal content is currently recognised in this voice’s audio stream.
/humans/voices/*/speech (documentation) The recognised text, as spoken by this voice.
/humans/voices/tracked (documentation) The list of voices currently detected by the robot.
/web_subtitles (documentation)

Touchscreen #

/touch_web_state (documentation)
/user_input (documentation)
/web/go_to (documentation) Sets the webpage to be displayed on the touchscreen.