ROS Publishing rate issue between 2022.2.1 and 2023.1.0-hotfix.1

Hi all,

So I am looking to update some prior work that I had got working in 2022.2.1 to work in the latest version. One of the main things I am having issue with is the IMU being published to ROS which is not performing consistently and, more critically, seems to be publishing the same timestamp multiple times.

I need IMU publishing at 100 Hz so I followed advice here and set Min Simulation Frame Rate to 100 as well as the Physics Scene Time per second to 100 and then setting the rosparam of use_sim_time to true.

In version 2022.2.1 I got publishing outputs as shown below

user@machine:~$ rostopic hz /sim_imu 
subscribed to [/sim_imu]
WARNING: may be using simulated time
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00267s window: 57
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00297s window: 114
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00266s window: 170
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00282s window: 227
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00252s window: 284
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00243s window: 341
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00224s window: 398
average rate: 100.000
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00210s window: 455

However when I switch to 2023.1.0-hotfix.1 I get the following

user@machine:~$ rostopic hz /sim_imu 
subscribed to [/sim_imu]
WARNING: may be using simulated time
average rate: 101.923
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00237s window: 54
average rate: 100.952
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00168s window: 107
average rate: 101.266
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00158s window: 161
average rate: 100.948
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00137s window: 214
average rate: 101.136
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00136s window: 268
average rate: 100.946
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00125s window: 321
average rate: 101.084
	min: 0.000s max: 0.020s std dev: 0.00126s window: 374

This on it’s face doesn’t seem like a huge issue but the simulator is also producing repeated timestamps for some of the published messages. The repeated timestamps doesn’t seem to happen with excessive frequently but it happens enough to cause some of my downstream processes issues where they didn’t before. Example of repeat as found with rostopic echo below. Any thoughts or advice as to what’s going on here and/or how to fix it?

  seq: 704
  stamp: 
    secs: 23
    nsecs: 179999482
  frame_id: "sim_imu"
orientation: 
  x: 4.899531802493584e-08
  y: 3.500635727959889e-07
  z: -3.0476334700324514e-07
  w: 1.0
orientation_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
angular_velocity: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
angular_velocity_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
linear_acceleration: 
  x: -6.861246674816357e-06
  y: 9.603061243979027e-07
  z: 9.800000190734863
linear_acceleration_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
---
header: 
  seq: 705
  stamp: 
    secs: 23
    nsecs: 179999482
  frame_id: "sim_imu"
orientation: 
  x: 4.899531802493584e-08
  y: 3.500635727959889e-07
  z: -3.0476334700324514e-07
  w: 1.0
orientation_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
angular_velocity: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
angular_velocity_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
linear_acceleration: 
  x: -6.861246674816357e-06
  y: 9.603061243979027e-07
  z: 9.800000190734863
linear_acceleration_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]

Hi,

I am moving your topic to the Isaac SIM category for better visibility.

Raffaello

Oops thank you :)

UPDATE this is found to still be the case in the latest 2023.1.1 release. New outputs

header: 
  seq: 5440
  stamp: 
    secs: 53
    nsecs: 889998795
  frame_id: "sim_imu"
orientation: 
  x: -2.2762310436519329e-07
  y: 7.503279420006947e-08
  z: 2.708304158716146e-08
  w: 1.0
orientation_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
angular_velocity: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
angular_velocity_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
linear_acceleration: 
  x: -1.4706429283251055e-06
  y: -4.461412572709378e-06
  z: 9.800000190734863
linear_acceleration_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
---
header: 
  seq: 5441
  stamp: 
    secs: 53
    nsecs: 899998795
  frame_id: "sim_imu"
orientation: 
  x: -2.2762310436519329e-07
  y: 7.503279420006947e-08
  z: 2.708304158716146e-08
  w: 1.0
orientation_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
angular_velocity: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
angular_velocity_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
linear_acceleration: 
  x: -1.4706429283251055e-06
  y: -4.461412572709378e-06
  z: 9.800000190734863
linear_acceleration_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
subscribed to [/imu]
WARNING: may be using simulated time
average rate: 101.961
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00137s window: 53
average rate: 100.980
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00098s window: 104
average rate: 101.307
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00113s window: 156
average rate: 100.980
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00098s window: 207
average rate: 101.172
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00107s window: 260
average rate: 100.977
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00098s window: 311
average rate: 101.117
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00105s window: 363
average rate: 100.978
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00098s window: 414
average rate: 101.085
	min: 0.000s max: 0.010s std dev: 0.00103s window: 467

Pinging my question again

1 Like

@david.hall2 Just want to follow up with this issue. Do you still observe it in Isaac Sim 4.5?

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