How to re-configure footprint completely

[ssr-yuki]

Hi. I would like to ask you a question related to footprint re-configuration.

We are developing a robot that changes its own horizontal lengths during operations. For example, the robot is small under transportation from A to B, it extends and make its body larger on the place B, and goes back to A. Therefore, we desire to update its footprint on B.

The document says that setting is_footprint_dynamic to true is enough to change footprint dynamically. However, I found that TebLocalPlannerROS class has two footprints variable, i.e. planner->robot_model_ and footprint_spec_, and they look independent to each other. is_footprint_dynamic flag only turns on the latter re-configuration, which synchronizes costmap re-configure.

In my understanding, if I change footprint completely, I have to change both of them with the following procedure:

• set is_footprint_dynamic true (when I boot a planner)
• use dynamic_reconfigure for local costmap footprint to change footprint_spec_
• set new footprint_model in the planner namespace on rosparam, then use dynamic_reconfigure for some planner's parameters in order to call TebLocalPlannerROS::reconfigureCB that updates planner->robot_model_

Is this procedure correct?

[IvanVN]

Did you manage to do it? I'm trying to do exactly this without success. The costmap footprint is updated and Teb uses it for feasibility, but the footprint model is not updated even though the params in the parameter server are updated and the reconfigure callback triggered.

[JiaoxianDu]

My solution is to reconfigure /move_base/global (local) _costmap/robot_radius, /move_base/global (local) _costmap/inflation_layer/inflation_radius and update rosparam /move_base/TebLocalPlannerROS/footprint_model/radius, and trigger reconfiguration of teb to call getRobotFootprintFromParamServer for updating. By the way, param is_footprint_dynamic seems not to work well, because it tries to get the value of padded_footprint_, which won't update until 'footprint_padding' changes value.