ros_babel_fish_tools' 'stats' command measures ROS topic bandwidth and serialization latency
New tool captures per-topic bandwidth, deserialization time, and compression effects in real time.
StefanFabian has released a new 'stats' tool as part of ros_babel_fish_tools, designed to give ROS developers precise measurements of serialized topic bandwidth and serialization latency. The tool subscribes to any ROS topic and computes the received rate, message latency (provided the message has a header and clocks are synchronized), the deserialization time from the serialized message to a full ROS message, and the bandwidth consumption based on the size of the serialized message. Additionally, users can test how compressing the serialized message would affect both bandwidth and latency, enabling data-driven decisions.
In practical use, the tool makes performance trade-offs visible. For example, a filtered point cloud saw significant bandwidth savings under compression, while a compressed wide-angle image showed no benefit and only wasted CPU cycles. This kind of introspection is crucial for optimizing ROS 2 systems, especially in resource-constrained environments like mobile robots. The tool complements the existing echo functionality, which outputs message content as JSON or YAML, by focusing purely on performance metrics. It is open source and available now as part of ros_babel_fish_tools.
- Subscribes to any ROS topic and measures bandwidth from serialized message size.
- Measures deserialization time and message latency (with header + synchronized clocks).
- Optional compression testing reveals whether compressing messages saves bandwidth or wastes time.
Why It Matters
Gives roboticists a concrete way to diagnose and optimize topic bandwidth and serialization overhead in ROS 2 systems.