kurt_navigation

This stack contains navigation components for KURT. Specifically, it provides:

• config and launch files for the basic navigation behaviors (slam, map navigation) and the respective components (gmapping, amcl, etc.) (package kurt_navigation),
• launch files and map data to navigate KURT the labs of UOS (both in reality and gazebo) (package kurt_navigation_experiments)

Running kurt_navigation in Gazebo

1. Bring up KURT in Gazebo:

    LC_ALL=C roslaunch kurt_gazebo kurt_avz_world.launch
   

   This starts KURT in the "AVZ 5th floor" world. (The LC_ALL trick is necessary to work around this bug on indigo.)

2. Start the navigation stack with AMCL:

    roslaunch kurt_navigation single_map_navigation.launch map_file:=$(rospack find uos_maps)/maps/avz5floor_gazebo.yaml
   

3. Run RViz:

    rosrun rviz rviz -d $(rospack find kurt_navigation)/rviz/navigation.rviz
   

   In RViz, click "2D Pose Estimate" and select the approximate position of the robot in the map.

4. Run teleop:

    rosrun uos_diffdrive_teleop uos_diffdrive_teleop_key
   

   Using teleop, drive the robot around a bit until it has a good localization (watch the AMCL Particle Swarm in RViz). Remember to keep the focus on the terminal window that runs uos_diffdrive_teleop_key while pressing buttons. It is important that the robot's localization is good before trying to pass any narrow doorways.

5. Give a goal to move_base by clicking the "2D Nav Goal" button in RViz and selecting a pose.

If you want to try gmapping instead of AMCL, run this instead of step 2:

roslaunch kurt_navigation slam.launch

That launch file also starts frontier_exploration. If you want to try it, visualize the topics exploration_polygon_marker and /explore_server/explore_costmap/costmap in RViz, draw a closed polygon using the "Publish Point" button and click once inside the polygon.