How to decrease obstacle area in costmaps

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Hello. First of all, I am very new to the ROS and robots in general as well. However, I am working with Turtlebot now (with Asus Pro Xtion Live camera) and I am trying to figure out how to manipulate parameters in the turtlebot_navigation package - especially costmaps. I have noticed that relatively small obstacles in the real word are represented as huge obstacles in a costmap and that causes the robot to use space ineffectively. I have already decreased the inflation area and that helped quite a bit, but I am interested whether there is any way to decrease an obstacle area in the costmaps. Moreover, I would like to understand parameters in costmap_common_params.yaml and what exactly they do. You can see the content of the file below.

max_obstacle_height: 0.60  # assume something like an arm is mounted on top of the robot

# Obstacle Cost Shaping (http://wiki.ros.org/costmap_2d/hydro/inflation)
robot_radius: 0.20  # distance a circular robot should be clear of the obstacle (kobuki: 0.18)
# footprint: [[x0, y0], [x1, y1], ... [xn, yn]]  # if the robot is not circular

map_type: voxel

obstacle_layer:
  enabled:              true
  max_obstacle_height:  0.6
  origin_z:             0.0
  z_resolution:         0.2
  z_voxels:             2
  unknown_threshold:    15
  mark_threshold:       0
  combination_method:   1
  track_unknown_space:  true    #true needed for disabling global path planning through unknown space
  obstacle_range: 2.5
  raytrace_range: 3.0
  origin_z: 0.0
  z_resolution: 0.2
  z_voxels: 2
  publish_voxel_map: false
  observation_sources:  scan bump
  scan:
    data_type: LaserScan
    topic: scan
    marking: true
    clearing: true
    min_obstacle_height: 0.25
    max_obstacle_height: 0.35
  bump:
    data_type: PointCloud2
    topic: mobile_base/sensors/bumper_pointcloud
    marking: true
    clearing: false
    min_obstacle_height: 0.0
    max_obstacle_height: 0.15
  # for debugging only, let's you see the entire voxel grid

#cost_scaling_factor and inflation_radius were now moved to the inflation_layer ns
inflation_layer:
  enabled:              true
  cost_scaling_factor:  5.0  # exponential rate at which the obstacle cost drops off (default: 10)
  inflation_radius:     0.5  # max. distance from an obstacle at which costs are incurred for planning paths.

static_layer:
  enabled:              true

I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and ROS Kinetic.

Thank you in advance for any help.