Class Time

source code

        object --+        
                 |        
genpy.rostime.TVal --+    
                     |    
    genpy.rostime.Time --+
                         |
                        Time

Time represents the ROS 'time' primitive type, which consists of two integers: seconds since epoch and nanoseconds since seconds. Time instances are mutable.

The Time.now() factory method can initialize Time to the current ROS time and from_sec() can be used to create a Time instance from the Python's time.time() float seconds representation.

The Time class allows you to subtract Time instances to compute Durations, as well as add Durations to Time to create new Time instances.

Usage:

 now = rospy.Time.now()
 zero_time = rospy.Time()

 print 'Fields are', now.secs, now.nsecs

 # Time arithmetic
 five_secs_ago = now - rospy.Duration(5) # Time minus Duration is a Time
 five_seconds  = now - five_secs_ago  # Time minus Time is a Duration
 true_val = now > five_secs_ago

 # NOTE: in general, you will want to avoid using time.time() in ROS code
 import time
 py_time = rospy.Time.from_sec(time.time())