Costmap clearing of obstacles

asked 2012-03-19 18:04:26 -0600

weiin
2268 ●26 ●46 ●65

updated 2012-03-19 18:05:30 -0600

I am having the same issues as this:

Blue points are obstacles marked

Pink are the laser scans

I am using Hokuyo UHG-08LX. What I still do not understand is, why are the obstacles not seen by the laser still left behind? This is so even after a few minutes (with robot not moving).

If the laser could see the obstacles before, there should be scans which would pass through these points after the obstacle is removed. Raytracing should have been able to clear those paths. Or am I missing something?

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answered 2012-03-20 03:35:35 -0600

DimitriProsser

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If the laser scanner is seeing maximum range, it might not be able to clear your obstacles. Some laser scanners will fill a maximum range point with 0.0 instead of some value. No return means that the costmap cannot be cleared. In order to clear an obstacle, the costmap must receive a scan that raytraces through where the obstacle used to be and returns a value. This tells the costmap "since I have now received a scan point that is farther away than the previous one, there must no longer be an obstacle here". If you do not receive this farther point (because max range fills 0.0 or your raytrace_range parameter is too low), you cannot clear the map.

Based on your images, I'm guessing that the scenario I mentioned above is likely.

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Yes, I was suspecting this as well when I echo the /scan topic and see quite a few 0.0 range readings. So the question is, what is the usual procedure to deal with out-of-range readings?

weiin ( 2012-03-20 14:51:43 -0600 )edit

It seems odd that if a robot was sitting there doing nothing and something passes in front of it for a brief moment. The robot records it, and after a few minutes when the robot is asked to move off, it still assumes an obstacle is there.

weiin ( 2012-03-20 14:53:55 -0600 )edit

I run the LaserScan through a custom filter (based on the laser_filters package) that replaces all values of 0.0 with max_range. Since the laser scanner hardware is actually incapable of measuring 0.0 (they have a minimum range), you can safely assume a 0.0 is a max range scan

DimitriProsser ( 2012-03-21 04:46:42 -0600 )edit

Does anyone have a custom filter similar to the one Dimitri is talking about?

musiqsoulchild ( 2015-03-23 03:50:58 -0600 )edit

To customize the filter take the LaserScanRangeFilter from laser_filters and modify the header file (range_filter.h) so that instead of filtered_scan.ranges[i] = quiet_NaN(), make it filtered_scan.ranges[i] = max_value; where max_value is within your laser range max.

nbanyk ( 2016-01-21 20:42:20 -0600 )edit

I have tried that solution, but still the laser scans with max range (or max_range + 1 as the current hydro-devel laser_filters apply) were not clearing the cells. This seems to be the desired behavior, as shown in the discussion below (see link in next comment)

Procópio ( 2016-02-02 10:01:50 -0600 )edit

discussion on why max range scans do not clear costmaps

Procópio ( 2016-02-02 10:01:57 -0600 )edit

Yes, in the end it was actually a value something slightly less than max that allowed for clearing.

nbanyk ( 2016-02-02 11:55:07 -0600 )edit

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answered 2017-04-21 03:57:39 -0600

mcarr
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I agree the issue is how the laser represents out of range values. I had success in setting the out of range values to slightly less than max_range by using a filter. I used the laser filters package and edited range_filter.h to replace with the value I wanted (4.9 was my replaced out of range value). Remember to catkin_make and source setup.bash after making these changes. Need to then add a remap from "scan" to "scan_filtered" in the launch file you're using.

The other important step is to check the raytrace_range parameter in costmap_common_params.yaml is greater than your replaced out of range value. As the previous answer mentioned, without this, your obstacles will not be cleared when detecting out of range.

Also check the the obstacle_range parameter, which is also in costmap_common_params.yaml is less than your raytrace_range parameter.

My config:

Laser: Neato XV_11 Lidar
Range: 0.06 to 5.0 m
Default out of range value: 0.05999 (this can be checked through rostopic echo /scan. Note - this value of 0.05999 will not clear obstacles behind it)
Parameters: replaced out of range value = 4.5, raytrace_range = 5.0, obstacle_range = 4.0.

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