Hi!

Currently I have a difwheeledrobot and a kinect inside Gazebo (these are separate "robots", not connected by any joint). The diffwheeledrobot has it's own scanner, has an AMCL launch made etc. I can navigate it around, and while moving if I put an obstacle in front of it, it will go around it. The kinect has a depthimagetolaserscan node, so it's basically a laser scanner.

My goal is to make the diff_wheeled use the kinect's scan data to navigate instead of it's own hokuyo scanner, which is attached to it.

(basically I want to navigate the robot around, but with a scanner that's in a fixed position. In reality I can't put the kinect on my robot, but I still want my robot to avoid (dynamic) obstacles based on what the kinect sees).

AMCL wants scan data from the /scan topic, and that part is alright, the kinect sends data on that topic. The problem is, the AMCL wants a baseframeid and an odomframeid, so it can connect the robot frame to the odom, and do it's computing and stuff, but my kinect isn't connected to either of these.

(in the tf tree, the diffwheeledrobot and the kinect is separate. The diffwheeledrobot's basefootprint connects to the odom, and that connects to the map. The kinect's root ends at it's own basefootprint_kinect)

If I disable the diff_wheeled's hokuyo, then the AMCL will throw this:

[ WARN] [1469782994.436635986, 36.386000000]: Timed out waiting for transform from base_footprint to map to become available before running costmap, tf error: . canTransform returned after 0.103 timeout was 0.1.

My question: Is it possible to use AMCL/Gmapping and navigation with a mobile robot and a detached/fixed kinect (not fixed to the mobile robot)?

If yes, how?

If no, then am I able to use the ros move_base navigation without AMCL? (so use navigation and collision avoidance with the same setup, on the fly. The obstacles are not static)

Than you.

Update #1: Okay, it seems like not the AMCL is the one throwing the warning, but the movebase. Still, no idea how to solve it. Maybe the better question is, can I use movebase with my setup?