Humble - ClearEntireCostmap plugin not disabling global and local costmap

[kamakshijain]

Hello, Project Statement: Robot will be interacting with an object (physically touching the object) present in the environment after T + 10 mins (example). Basically, the object at start time is part of the world and thus considered as an obstacle by costmap. After T + 10 mins when I want to interact with the object, I don't want it to be considered as an obstacle.

Trying to Use Plugin:
ClearEntireCostmap plugin (and similar costmap manipulation plugins) for both globalcostmap and localcostmap. Follow up on #3243 in humble.

I just did a quick test on rolling / main and things are working fine at least there. I localized the robot into an incorrect spot a few times so I created alot of scatter in the costmap. Then I called the service /global_costmap/clear_entirely_global_costmap service using the ros2 CLI and I can see that the scatter is removed.

I was able to verify what Steve Macenski tested on rolling. I was able to clear the costmap for old scatter generated by wrong initialization, however I was not able to clear costmap for scatter generated for current position [for global costmap only]. Question 1: is it suppose to clear/disable costmap for current time? In ROS1: setting the costmap enable parameter to false, completely disabled costmap, I am looking for that kind of feature.

WANTING: to Disable costmap at run-time, can I do that using this or some other service?

Issue2: I was not able to see any difference when I used service call ClearEntireCostmap for local costmap. There was no difference between before and after.

Please see the attached picture. Picture contains, navigation logs, cmd line service call to global and local costmap and rviz. ros2 service call /global_costmap/clear_entirely_global_costmap nav2_msgs/srv/ClearEntireCostmap "{request: {}}"or ros2 service call /local_costmap/clear_entirely_local_costmap nav2_msgs/srv/ClearEntireCostmap "{request: {}}"

Required Info:

• Operating System:

  • Ubuntu 20.04

• ROS2 Version:

  • humble

• Version or commit hash:

  • 1.1.2

• DDS implementation:

  • rmw_cyclonedds_cpp

Steps to reproduce issue

1. using humble 1.1.2
2. export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp echo $RMW_IMPLEMENTATION
3. ros2 service call /global_costmap/clear_entirely_global_costmap nav2_msgs/srv/ClearEntireCostmap "{request: {}}"

Expected behavior

Global Costmap: Before: After:

Actual behavior

Global Costmap Before: After:

Issue 2:

Local Costmap no change

Additional information

Added nav2_config

local_costmap:
  local_costmap:
    ros__parameters:
      update_frequency: 5.0
      publish_frequency: 2.0
      global_frame: odom
      robot_base_frame: base_link
      use_sim_time: True
      rolling_window: true
      width: 3
      height: 3
      resolution: 0.05

global_costmap:
  global_costmap:
    ros__parameters:
      update_frequency: 1.0
      publish_frequency: 1.0
      global_frame: map
      robot_base_frame: base_link
      use_sim_time: True
      robot_radius: 0.22
      resolution: 0.05
      plugins: ["static_layer", "obstacle_layer", "inflation_layer"]
      obstacle_layer:
        plugin: "nav2_costmap_2d::ObstacleLayer"
        enabled: True
        observation_sources: scan
        scan:
          topic: /scan
          max_obstacle_height: 2.0
          clearing: True
          marking: True
          data_type: "LaserScan"
      static_layer:
        plugin: "nav2_costmap_2d::StaticLayer"
        map_subscribe_transient_local: True
      inflation_layer:
        plugin: "nav2_costmap_2d::InflationLayer"
      always_send_full_costmap: True
      observation_sources: scan
      scan:
        topic: /scan
        max_obstacle_height: 2.0
        clearing: True
        marking: True
  global_costmap_client:
    ros__parameters:
      use_sim_time: True
  global_costmap_rclcpp_node:
    ros__parameters:
      use_sim_time: True

---

Feature request

Disable Global and Local Costmap at Run-Time.

Feature description

ROS1 was able to set enable parameter to false and the costmap would get disabled at run-time. expecting something similar to be able to interact with objects in the environment.

Implementation considerations

[AlexeyMerzlyakov]

Apologies for being late in response. I will have a working cycles ~at the end of this week to check and try reproduce the problem on my side, and then I will tell an updates on this.

[AlexeyMerzlyakov]

I've experimented locally the situation, and I see ClearEntireCostmap service is working as expected in Nav2: for global costmap all artifacts are being removed in whole costmap, for local costmap I did not find any clue to remain artifacts on it (everything is being cleared on costmap update cycle). Please note, that ClearEntireCostmap service is not disabling costmap at all. It is forcing costamp to reset, clearing all unnecessary artifacts on it.

@kamakshijain, from your illustrations it looks like for global costmap is also works fine. Initially made noise at the costmap is being removed from it after ClearEntireCostmap service call: Remaining items, which could be recognised as "noise" - is a localization error. Since global costmap is being consisted from static and obstacle layers, they both generating the data on costmap that have being merged on it. Static layer operates in the map frame, and put the input map on the costmap. Obstacle layer operates in the odom frame, and adds on the master costmap sensors data. If robot is being localized incorrectly, the data will be looking noisy, but it is still expected correct behavior in this case:

As for local costamp illustrations, from pictures it looks like you have referencing on the global costmap on the pictures instead. All the data on local costamp is also seems to being reset.

If you want to completely disable costmap you need to set <layer_name>.enabled parameter to False. Like ROS1, it is still available in Nav2: it is being dynamically supported. It could be something like the following command for the global_costmap:

ros2 service call /global_costmap/global_costmap/set_parameters rcl_interfaces/srv/SetParameters "{parameters: [{name: "static_layer.enabled", value: {type: 1, bool_value: False}}, {name: "obstacle_layer.enabled", value: {type: 1, bool_value: False}}, {name: "inflation_layer.enabled", value: {type: 1, bool_value: False}}]}"

And set all these layers to True if you want to bring them back again. I think, this is what you are looking for.