[ros-users] Flushing / resetting the TF buffer

[Armin Hornung]

Hi!

Is there a way to flush or reset the TF buffer, i.e. clearing all 
transformations currently stored?

A little background: I am using a method similar to the one in the 
"amcl" node to overcome the limitations from the tree-structure of TF. 
The robot model and all transformations to joints and sensors are in an 
"odom" frame, so when running localization I publish a transformation of 
the odometry frame in the map frame that results in the robot's 
base_frame ending up in the localized pose. To avoid timeouts I use the 
hack / workaround from the "amcl"-node and publish the tf to "odom" a 
little in the future. Now, when localizing from bag files (all times are 
with respect to the originally recorded data) it seems like coordinate 
frames are jumping back and forth sometimes, which I think results from 
TFs still being in the buffer from a previous run (through the same or a 
different log file). When there is a way of clearing the TF buffer, that 
would help when being called at the start of localization, without the 
need of restarting roscore.

Cheers,
Armin

-- 
Armin Hornung                              Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~hornunga   Dept. of Computer Science
HornungA at informatik.uni-freiburg.de        Humanoid Robots Lab
Tel.: +49 (0)761-203-8010                  Georges-Köhler-Allee 79
Fax : +49 (0)761-203-8007                  D-79110 Freiburg, Germany