Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

1.2.2 Build your own ROS Application – Publisher and subscriber nodes

Course subject(s) Module 1. ROS Essentials

This time, we will take a look at two different classes of ROS nodes: publishers and subscribers.

Publisher Nodes

A ROS node that generates information is called a publisher. A publisher sends information to nodes via topics. With robotics often these publishers are connected with sensors like cameras, encoders etc.

If you use the rosnode info command you can see with which topics a node is connected and if these are outbound or inbound connections.

Subscriber Nodes

A ROS node that receives information is called a subscriber. It’s subscribed to information in a topic and uses topic callback functions to process the received information. With robotics, subscribers typically monitor system states such as triggering an alert when the robot reaches joint limits.

You can again use the rosnode info command to find information about a subscriber node. Don’t forget to source your workspace!

Creative Commons License
Hello (Real) World with ROS - Robot Operating System by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/hello-real-world-with-ros-robot-operating-systems//.
Back to top
[sg_popup id=6]