DWAPlannerROS making spiral trajectory while following global path

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Hi all,

I'm trying to configure dwa planner for a custom skid drive platform, but I'm unable to get a good behaviour of the planner. As it tries to follow the global path, the planner always chooses an almost circular trajectory, alternating forward and backward movements. As result, the platform ends following the path in kind of a spiral trajectory. This behaviour can be observed in the following video.

My initial guess was that it's trying to get as fast as possible to the path, so I've tried to reduce path_distance_bias while increasing goal_distance_bias. My hope was that it would tend more towards the goal and less to the path, thus, avoiding turning so hard. However, this change didn't show any improvement.

We need DWA, as TrajectoryPlannerROS is not able to make backwards trajectories and has a hard time achieving goals with our required precision.

Any help will be appreciated.

I'm using ROS Hydro on ubuntu 12.04. Relevant configuration files:

DWA params:

DWAPlannerROS:

  acc_lim_x: 2.5
  acc_lim_y: 0.0 # Not holonomic == 0
  acc_lim_th: 3.2
  max_trans_vel: 0.55
  min_trans_vel: 0.1
  max_vel_x: 0.55
  min_vel_x: -0.55
  max_vel_y: 0.0 # Not holonomic == 0
  min_vel_y: 0.0 # Not holonomic == 0
  max_rot_vel: 1.0
  min_rot_vel: 0.3

# Goal Tolerance Parameters

  yaw_goal_tolerance: 0.05
  xy_goal_tolerance: 0.10
  latch_xy_goal_tolerance: false

# Forward Simulation Parameters

  sim_time: 1.7
  sim_granularity: 0.025
  vx_samples: 3
  vy_samples: 0 # Not holonomic
  vtheta_samples: 20
  controller_frequency: 20.0
  penalize_negative_x: false  

# Trajectory Scoring Parameters

  path_distance_bias: 0.1 #32.0
  goal_distance_bias: 50 #24.0
  occdist_scale: 0.1 #0.01
  forward_point_distance: 0.325
  stop_time_buffer: 0.2
  scaling_speed: 0.25
  max_scaling_factor: 0.2

# Oscillation Prevention Parameters   

  oscillation_reset_dist: 0.05  

# Global Plan Parameters

  prune_plan: true

move_base params

base_global_planner: navfn/NavfnROS
base_local_planner: dwa_local_planner/DWAPlannerROS

recovery_behaviors: [{name: conservative_reset, type: clear_costmap_recovery/ClearCostmapRecovery}, {name: rotate_recovery, type: rotate_recovery/RotateRecovery}, {name: aggressive_reset, type: clear_costmap_recovery/ClearCostmapRecovery}]

controller_frequency: 10.0
planner_patience: 5.0
controller_patience: 15.0
conservative_reset_dist: 3.0
recovery_behavior_enabled: false
clearing_rotation_allowed: false
shutdown_costmaps: false
oscillation_timeout: 0.0
oscillation_distance: 0.5
planner_frequency: 0.5

[EDIT]

It seems that my problem was similar to the one reported in this other question. The bypass proposed there (increasing acc_lim to some very high values) also worked for me.

I also noticed that acc_lim_th seems to be ignored. acc_lim_theta is the correct paramether. It looks like the wiki documentation is outdated.