Bad maps produced by gmapping in simulation with feature-poor environments

edit

To help anyone else trying to debug this, I thought I'd post my node that prints out the robot's pose from 3 sources:

1. The Gazebo model which I think is the ground truth, via topic /gazebo/model_states
2. The odometry published by Gazebo
3. The robot pose published by gmapping

While there may not be any noise added to Gazebo's odometry, it isn't simply publishing the ground truth, as you can see if you drive the robot into a wall for a bit.

#include <ros/ros.h>
#include <tf/transform_listener.h>
#include <geometry_msgs/Pose.h>
#include <gazebo_msgs/ModelStates.h>

tf::TransformListener * listener;
bool received_gazebo_message = false;
geometry_msgs::Pose model_pose;

void receivedGazeboMessage(const gazebo_msgs::ModelStatesPtr& model_states)
{
    if (!received_gazebo_message)
    {
        std::cout << "Gazebo model info received!" << std::endl;
    }
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < model_states->name.size(); ++i)
    {
        if (model_states->name[i] == "mobile_base")
        {
            model_pose = model_states->pose[i];
            received_gazebo_message = true;
            break;
        }
    }
}

void printPoses(const ros::TimerEvent&)
{
    if (received_gazebo_message)
    {
        tf::StampedTransform odom_transform;
        tf::StampedTransform gmap_transform;
        try
        {
            listener->lookupTransform("/odom", "/base_footprint", ros::Time(0), odom_transform);
            listener->lookupTransform("/map", "/base_footprint", ros::Time(0), gmap_transform);
        }
        catch (tf::TransformException & ex)
        {
            ROS_ERROR("%s", ex.what());
            return;
        }
        std::cout << std::setiosflags(std::ios::fixed) << std::setprecision(3);
        std::cout << "* at " << odom_transform.stamp_.toSec() << ":" << std::endl;

        std::cout << "Model: " << model_pose.position.x << ", " << model_pose.position.y <<
                " / " << tf::getYaw(model_pose.orientation) << std::endl;
        std::cout << "Odom : " << odom_transform.getOrigin()[0] << ", " <<
                odom_transform.getOrigin()[1] <<
                " / " << tf::getYaw(odom_transform.getRotation()) << std::endl;
        std::cout << "Gmapg: " << gmap_transform.getOrigin()[0] << ", " <<
                gmap_transform.getOrigin()[1] <<
                " / " << tf::getYaw(gmap_transform.getRotation()) << std::endl;
    }
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    ros::init(argc, argv, "pose_printer");
    ros::NodeHandle n;
    listener = new tf::TransformListener();

    ros::Subscriber gazebo_ground_truth_sub =
                n.subscribe("/gazebo/model_states", 1, &receivedGazeboMessage);
    ros::Timer timer1 = n.createTimer(ros::Duration(1.0), printPoses);

    ros::spin();
    return 0;
}