Navigation with a laser and a kinect
Hello
I'm trying to navigate with a differential robot using two sensors, a laser and a kinect. First I'm going to descrive what I attempt and then I will explain the problems I'm having.
The laser is used for detecting far obstacles and to get the robot localized on a map by AMCl. The kinect is used for detecting near obtacles that the laser doesn't see (e.g. obstacles that are under the laser's vision).
The main problem is that the Kinect has not the same range and the same field of view than the laser. The laser has a range of 30m and 270º, and the Kinect about 5m and 70º. That makes that when the Kinect sees an obstacle that the laser doesn't, and then the obstacle comes out of the kinect's field of view, the laser clears it. That makes the kinect completely useless.
I've tried to set the parameter clearing of the laser to false, but that's not a good solution because sometimes, when the robot is a little tilted, the laser detects the floor and marks it as an obstacle.
I've also tried to use the laser only for introducing obstacles in the local costamp, and the kinect for both local and global costmap. That's a better solution but has one problem: when the laser detects an obstacle that the kinect doesn't, if the obstacle is in the middle of the path calculated, the robot try to clean it with the recovery behaviours and then stops saying that is unable to plan a path.
How can I solve all this problems? Or how can I use the laser and the kinect for navigation at the same time?
I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 and ROS Fuerte. Thank's in advance ;)
