clarification ~explore_clear_space (bool, default: true)

[JoBot88]

Good morning and thank you in advance for your help,

My problem is the following, I have a robot that navigates in an area potentially hosting obstacles made of glass that my robot could not see with its laser. On my robot I have bumpers and sonars that could sense these glasses. Is there a simple way for me to make this package work by using my other sensors data in order to prevent collisions but still explore everything that is explorable ? Also what is this parameter achieving ? Can I use it to my advantage ?

Thank you

[paulbovbel]

You can make use of additional sensor data by integrating custom costmap_2d layer plugins.

The parameter explore_clear_space is documented here: http://wiki.ros.org/frontier_exploration#Parameters-1

[robbiedood]

Dear frontier_exploration friends,

Creating extra custom costmap_2d layer plugins is cool but doesn't sound a unique and simplest way to solve the problem. Since you've created a nice global_map.launch file, could we simply extend ObstacleLayer plugin, by adding additional observation sources ? such as:

observation_sources: laser bumper sonar laser: {data_type: LaserScan, ...} bumper: {data_type: BumperEvent, ...} sonar: {data_type: ...}

Hope to hear your expertise.

-- Luke