Only released in EOL distros:   kinetic

Overview

This package broadcasts BVH files (a motion capture data format) as tf transfromations.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/mingfeisun/bvh_broadcaster

Data input

Input contains two string parameters:

• A path to BVH file, e.g., example.bvh

• A name of frame for motion capture to be loaded on, e.g., "world" frame, or "odom" frame.

You can find relevant BVH-formatted CMU MoCap from this post. Get BVH-formatted motion capture data from here.

Usage

   1 python bvh_broadcaster.py [-h] [-n NAME] [-l] bvh_file base_frame
   2 
   3 positional arguments:
   4   bvh_file              A path to bvh file that you want to broadcast
   5   base_frame            An existing frame in rviz on which the skeleton will
   6                         be loaded
   7 
   8 optional arguments:
   9   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  10   -n NAME, --name NAME  Node name, default: BVHBroadcaster
  11   -l, --loop            Loop broadcasting

For example:

   1 # add execution access
   2 chmod +x scripts/bvh_broadcaster.py
   3 # loop broadcasting bvh to world frame
   4 python scripts/bvh_broadcaster.py example/13_14.bvh world -l

Now, you can view the result in rviz:

The original actor and BVH file are as follows:

BVH resources for Motion Capture

CMU provides a lot of useful motion capture data, see CMU MoCap. Nevertheless, these data are not presented in BVH format. You can find relevant BVH-formatted CMU MoCap from this post.