Long-term autonomous navigation

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Hi David V. Lu!! :), how do you ensure the global planner still finds the optimal path when obstacles contained in the static map are moved around the environment? Also, thanks for all your contributions to the navigation stack. Your code is really awesome!

Thank you, although I can't take credit for a lot of it.

Practically speaking, I make sure the static map contains the minimal set of obstacles. This often means erasing chairs and other temporary obstacles by hand. Sadly, there's no guarantee that it will be optimal.

Ok, that makes sense. I have been trying to find a long-term navigation approach that requires minimal setup, so that other people (who are new to ROS) can easily setup my mobile robot in new environments. Asking them to erase obstacles from the map created with gmapping is probably best.

To simplify setup I have looked into using slam_karto instead of gmapping as it can (supposedly?) load an existing map and resume mapping, so that the robot can update the static map while navigating. Do you perhaps have experience with this or suggestions?

This ROS answer suggests that slam_karto can resume mapping from an existing map. I also tried cartographer but its CPU requirements are too high for my basic robots.

Slam Karto as it exists today will not allow for that - its not in the free tier SDK that slam_karto in ros perception is based on. You'd have to contact SRI/karto to get licenses for that. Cartographer is probably your best bet out-of-the-box solution if you absolutely require it.