Can this package run in real time?

[stecasta]

Hello guys and thank you for sharing this amazing work with everyone.

I would like to use the traversability map to do the path planning for a mobile robot. Currently I'm feeding a filtered pointcloud to the elevation_mapping node which sends the elevation map through a service to the traversability_estimation node. With this setup the traversability map topic is published at a rate of about 0.5 Hz although I set min_update_rate: 2. I was wondering if there's any way I can increase this by changing some parameters. Also, could this be related to the hardware I'm using?

I didn't change any relevant setting in the config file.

Thank you for your time.

[marco-tranzatto]

Hi @stecasta ,

This package can be definitely used in real time. Some questions for you:

• can you tell me the output of "rostopic hz X", where X your input point-could to elevation mapping
• can you tell me which value you use for the parameter fused_map_publishing_rate for elevation mapping?

Regards, Marco.

[stecasta]

Thank you for the quick reply @marco-tranzatto,

• input point-cloud (I apply a voxel filter to the kinect point-cloud): $ rostopic hz /filtcloud average rate: 7.212 min: 0.046s max: 0.271s std dev: 0.04889s window: 72
• I set the fused_map_publishing_rate to 2, but apparently the fusion step is not fast enough: [ INFO] [1561776332.837986153, 2100.428000000]: ElevationMap received a point cloud (23300 points) for elevation mapping. [ INFO] [1561776337.092642383, 2102.387000000]: Elevation map has been fused in 5.938010 s.

Regards, Stefano

[marco-tranzatto]

Hi @stecasta,

then I'd suggest you try this branch in elevation mapping: test/increse_fps and set these two parameters in your cofing file for traversability estimation:

• submap_service: "/elevation_mapping/get_raw_submap"
• use_raw_map: true

Regards,

Marco.

[stecasta]

Hi @marco-tranzatto,

thanks for your suggestion. Now I can see the raw map is updated very quickly (>10Hz): [ INFO] [1561880264.610666302, 1659.829000000]: ElevationMap received a point cloud (55165 points) for elevation mapping. [ INFO] [1561880271.307094219, 1662.005000000]: Raw map has been updated with a new point cloud in 0.062438 s. but the topic /elevation_mapping/elevation_map_raw is still published at about 0.5 Hz.

For what concerns the traversability estimation node, this map is also published at about 0.5 Hz, but from the debug mode (and also form Rviz) I can see that it takes a longer time to update: [DEBUG] [1561880261.288066717, 1658.499000000]: Traversability map has been updated in 3.083911 s.

Any further suggestions?

Regards, Stefano

[tomlankhorst]

Closing due to inactivity. Feel free to open a new question might this still be relevant.