Learn about the various command-line tools in the ROS platform through this guide for better and easy understanding.

1. Robot Operating System
Guide to
Command-Line Tools
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AshwinRajendran

2. Start-up and Process
Launch Tools
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3. roscore
It is a collection of nodes and programs that are pre-
requisites of a ROS-based system. You must have a roscore
running in order for ROS nodes to communicate.
Usage: $ roscore
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4. rosrun
rosrun allows you to run an executable in an arbitrary
package from anywhere without having to give its full path
or cd/roscd.
Usage: $ rosrun package executable
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5. roslaunch
Starts ROS nodes locally and remotely via SSH, as well as
setting parameters on the parameter server.
Usage: $ roslaunch package_name file.launch
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6. Introspection and
Command Tools
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7. rosnode
rosnode is a command-line tool for displaying debug
information about ROS Nodes, including publications,
subscriptions and connections.
Test connectivity to the node.
Usage: $ rosnode ping /node_name
rosnodeping
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8. Display a list of current nodes.
Usage: $ rosnode list
rosnodelist
rosnodekill
Kill one or more nodes by name.
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9. rosnodeinfo
Display information about a node, including publications
and subscriptions.
Usage: $ rosnode info /node_name
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10. rosnodemachine
List nodes running on a particular machine.
Example: $ rosnode machine ninja.local
/talker-ninja.local-72266-1257921234733
/rosout
/listener-ninja.local-72615-1257921238320
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11. rostopic
It is a tool for displaying debug information about
ROS Topics, including publishers, subscribers, publishing
rate, and ROS Messages.
Display messages published to a topic.
Usage: $ rostopic echo /topic_name
rostopicecho
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12. Display the bandwidth used by a topic.
Usage: $ rostopic bw /topic_name
rostopicbw
rostopichz
Display the publishing rate of a topic. The rate reported is by
default the average rate over the entire time rostopic has
been running.
Usage: $ rostopic hz /topic_name
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13. Print information about topic.
Usage: $ rostopic info /topic_name
rostopicinfo
rostopicfind
Find topics by type.
Example: $ rostopic find std_msg/String
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14. Display topic type of a topic.
Usage: $ rostopic type /topic_name
rostopictype
rostopiclist
Display a list of current topics.
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15. rostopicpub
Publish data to a topic.
Usage: $ rostopic pub <topic-name> <topic-type> [data...]
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16. rosservice
It is a tool for listing and querying ROS Services.
List all the services that are currently available.
rosservicelist
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17. Call a service from the command line.
Usage: $ rosservice call /service_name service-args
rosservicecall
rosservicenode
Display the name of the node that provides a particular
service.
Usage: $ rosservice node /service_name
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18. Display the URI of a service. This is useful, for example, if
you wish to know what address a service is using.
Usage: $ rosservice uri /service_name
rosserviceuri
rosserviceargs
Print the arguments to a service.
Usage: $ rosservice args /service_name
Display all services of a particular type.
Example: $ rosservice find rospy_tutorials/AddTwoInts
rosservicefind
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19. Display the type of a service.
Usage: $ rosservice type /service_name
rosservicetype
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20. rosparam
It is a tool for getting and setting ROS Parameters on
the Parameter Server using YAML-encoded files.
Get a parameter value.
Usage: $ rosparam get parameter_name
rosparamget
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21. Set a parameter to a value. parameter-value is required
unless --textfile or --binfile are specified.
Usage: $ rosparam set parameter_name value
rosparamset
rosparamload
Load parameters from a YAML file into the
specified [namespace] (defaults to /)
Usage: $ rosparam load dump.yaml
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22. Delete a parameter value.
Usage: $ rosparam delete parameter_name
rosparamdelete
rosparamdump
Dump the YAML-formatted contents of the Parameter
Server to a file.
Usage: $ rosparam dump dump.yaml
Example:
$ rosparam dump -v gains.yaml /gains
dumping namespace [/gains] to file [gains.yaml]
/gains/i=1.0
/gains/p=1.0
/gains/d=1.0 22

23. rosparamlist
List all parameter names.
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24. rosmsg/rossrv
rosmsg contains two command-line
tools: rosmsg and rossrv. rosmsg is a tool for displaying
information about ROS Message types. rossrv is a tool for
displaying information about ROS Service types.
Display a list of all messages.
rosmsglist
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25. Display a list of all messages in a package.
rosmsgpackage
rosmsgpackages
Display a list of all packages with messages.
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26. Display the fields in a ROS message type.
rosmsgshow
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27. Filesystem
Management tools
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28. rospack allows you to get information about packages.
Usage: $ rospack find [package_name]
rospack
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29. Fixes path and pluginlib problems.
rospackprofile
roscd
roscd is part of the rosbash suite. It allows you to change
directory directly to a package or a stack.
Usage: $ roscd [package[/subdir]]
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30. rosls is part of the rosbash suite. It allows you to ls directly
in a package by name rather than by absolute path.
Usage: $ rosls [package[/subdir]]
rosls
rosed
Open requested ROS file in a text editor.
Usage: $ rosed [package] [file]
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31. Copy a file from one place to another.
Usage: $ roscp [package] [file] [destination]
roscp
roswtf
Displays a errors and warnings about a running ROS system
or launch file.
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32. Creates a new ROS stack.
Usage: $ catkin create pkg [package name]
[depend1]..[dependN]
catkincreatepkg
catkin_make
Builds a ROS catkin workspace.
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33. Logging tools
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34. rosbag
The rosbag command-line tool provides functionality for
ROS bags.
It can record a bag, republish the messages from one or more
bags, summarize the contents of a bag, check a bag's
message definitions, filter a bag's messages based on a
Python expression, compress and decompress a bag and
rebuild a bag's index.
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35. rosbag record subscribes to topics and writes a bag file with
the contents of all messages published on those topics. The
file contains interlaced, serialized ROS messages dumped
directly to a single file as they come in over the wire. This is
the most performance and disk-friendly recording format
possible. To further reduce disk usage, we can compress bag
files as they are created.
rosbagrecord
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36. rosbag play reads the contents of one or more bag file, and
plays them back in a time-synchronized fashion. Time
synchronization occurs based on the global timestamps at
which messages were received.
rosbagplay
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37. rosbag compress is a command-line tool for compressing
bag files.
rosbagcompress
rosbagdecompress
It is a command-line tool for decompressing bag files. It
automatically determines which compression format a bag
uses.
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38. A tool that prints the information about a particular
transformation between a source frame and a target frame.
Usage: $ rosrun tf tf_echo <source_frame> <target_frame>
tf_echo
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39. A tool for visualizing, inspecting, and replaying bag files.
Usage: $ rqt bag bag file.bag
rqt_bag
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40. rqt_bag
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41. Introspection &
Command Tools
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42. A tool for viewing published topics in real time.
Usage: $ rqt
Plugin Menu->Topic->Topic Monitor
rqt_topic
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43. Tool for publishing messages.
Usage: $ rqt
Plugin Menu->Topic->Message Publisher
rqtpublisher
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44. Tool for calling services.
Usage: $ rqt
Plugin Menu->Service->Service Caller
rqt servicecaller
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45. A tool for ROS specific process monitoring.
Usage: $ rqt
Plugin Menu->Introspection->Process Monitor
rqt_top
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46. Tool for displaying graphs of running ROS nodes with
connecting topics.
Usage: $ rqt_graph
rqt_graph
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47. Development
environments
&
Data Visualization
Tool
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48. Two tools for accessing an xterm shell and python console
respectively.
Usage: $ rqt
Plugin Menu->Miscellaneous Tools->Shell
Plugin Menu->Miscellaneous Tools->Python
Console
rqt_shellandrqt_py_console
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49. A tool to display image topics
Usage: $ rqt_image_view
rqt_image_view
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50. Thank You!
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