Large pose jumps in gmapping

edit

Hi! I have a Turtlebot with Create base, a Hokuyo laser scanner, and no Kinect, running Groovy. When I use gmapping (through the gmapping_demo), or even when navigating in a static map (through amcl_demo), the pose seems to be reasonably accurate at first, but then I see a large jump in pose (several meters). gmapping produces the error "Transform from /base_link to /odom failed". Sometimes it rights itself after a while, but sometimes it just messes up the map. The pose jumps to locations both inside and outside the mapped region.

Symptoms are similar to unanswered question 58955.

Is the transform failure the likely cause of these jumps? Where should I look to find the cause of the transform failure?

Edit: I've been looking at the tf frames in rviz and some of the transforms using tf_echo.
My tree looks like: /map -> /odom -> /base_footprint -> /base_link -> (a lot of frames for various standoffs, plates, etc.)

The transform from /base_footprint to /base_link is static and looks OK.

The large pose jumps occur when the transform between /map and /odom zeros itself out (edit 2: keeps publishing, but with all zero values). This transform appears to be adjusting for the accumulated odometry errors, so when it zeros out, the robot model jumps to the pose from the odometry, which is generally off by a few meters.

I haven't seen any large changes in the transform between /odom and /base_footprint using tf_echo, but I haven't looked carefully at it yet.

I haven't yet looked at the transform between /base_link and /odom (which gmapping says is failing when the jumps occur).

So far, the /map -> /odom transform seems to have the largest problems, yet gmapping says the /odom -> /base_link transform is failing. Is the /odom frame failing? Is something failing to publish the correct transforms?

Thank you!

Edit 2: Here is a more complete description of the gmapping output:

gmapping usually prints this immediately upon jumps:

[ERROR] [1371054374.583403027]: Transform from base_link to odom failed
update frame 18556
update ld=1.09735 ad=2.69054
Laser Pose= 2.60559 0.20104 2.43665
m_count 27

Then it starts printing this:

[ WARN] [1371054380.206694798]: Clearing costmap to unstuck robot.
[ WARN] [1371054380.407737352]: Rotate recovery behavior started.
[ WARN] [1371054380.606770270]: Clearing costmap to unstuck robot.
[ WARN] [1371054380.806767690]: Rotate recovery behavior started.
[ERROR] [1371054381.006780153]: Aborting because a valid plan could not be found. Even after executing all recovery behaviors

Average Scan Matching Score=396.033
neff= 40.7624
Registering Scans:Done
[ERROR] [1371054386.480540756]: Transform from base_link to odom failed

update frame 18557
update ld=0.00494867 ad=0.52552
Laser Pose= 2.61022 0.199294 2.96217
m_count 28
Average Scan Matching Score=411.485
neff= 40.7294
Registering Scans:Done

Printouts like this continue until the /map -> /odom transform and robot position return to normal.

Occasionally, I see a printout like this:

[ WARN] [1371054758.986420773]: Map update loop missed its desired rate of 3.0000Hz... the loop actually took 0 ...