robot_localization tf transform jitters when stopping motion

edit

Hi there,

We're trying to use r_l on an outdoor ground vehicle with an IMU affixed to the top, and two RTK GPS receivers fore and aft. The IMU provides roll and pitch at 10 Hz (as imu0), and the GPS provides relative position (meters from base station) and yaw, and optionally pitch, at 10 Hz (as pose0). We don't have any wheel encoders, so we don't have a typical odometry source. As a result, we simply use a static transform from map to odom, and we are using r_l to generate a transform from odom to base_link.

r_l seems to provide a very accurate transform most of the time (judged by visual inspection of rviz), but when the vehicle stops the estimated position of base_link jitters (or oscillates) for 1-2 seconds by 0.1-0.5 meters primarily along the vehicle's X axis, then stops at the correct position. However, if we remove imu0 as an input into r_l, the transform stops smoothly and quickly (as does the physical vehicle).

This jitter occurs even when the following are true:

• The IMU and GPS do not provide competing measurements for the same axes of motion (i.e., we remove pitch from the GPS input)
• The covariance matrix diagonal on the IMU is temporarily set to 1e12 (for debug purposes), which we would imagine would cause the r_l filters to more or less ignore the IMU input
• The IMU data are all temporarily set to 0 (for debug purposes), and only an irrelevant axis (e.g., Z'') is configured to be active

An example GPS message and IMU message are below, as is the YAML configuration for r_l.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thank you!

imu0:

---
header: 
  seq: 4
  stamp: 
    secs: 1487210998
    nsecs: 225980997
  frame_id: base_link
orientation: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
  w: 1.0
orientation_covariance: [1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0]
angular_velocity: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
angular_velocity_covariance: [1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0]
linear_acceleration: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
linear_acceleration_covariance: [1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1000000000000.0]
---

pose0:

---
header: 
  seq: 2395
  stamp: 
    secs: 1487211196
    nsecs: 500669002
  frame_id: odom
pose: 
  pose: 
    position: 
      x: -3.85235159044
      y: -5.17830684957
      z: 0.00309827089337
    orientation: 
      x: 0.00792342224031
      y: -0.0124397107908
      z: 0.53716653655
      w: 0.843347250536
  covariance: [0.01, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.01, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.04, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1e-12, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.04, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.01]
---

r_l YAML configuration ... (more)