I am looking for a way to allow a user to dynamically add no go areas i.e. areas in the world that the robot planner should avoid. My idea is to modify the costmap2d that movebase is using however there does not appear to be anyway to directly modify the costmap.

I noticed a similar question titled "Custom CostMap Values" (System won't let me paste the link) was asked on these forums and their idea was to either create artificial sensor data or modify movebase. Creating artificial sensor data I don't think would work since the real sensor data would clear out information added by the artificial sensor data. The other option is to modify the costmap2d code to accept a message from the user and modify the costmap.

Can anyone think of another way to add dynamically created no go zones to a planner?