navigation 0.8.1 released

navigation 0.8.1 has just been released. The primary purpose of this release is to move visualization topics into the namespace of the node instead of having them clutter the global namespace. This means that instead of rviz subscribing to local_costmap/obstacles to display obstacle information, it will instead subscribe to move_base_node_name/local_costmap/obstacles. For most people using the navigation stack, you won't have to change a thing, there are, however, a few exceptions to this:

1. If you subscribe to any of the visualization topics that move_base publishes, and your code lives outside the patched WG repository, you'll have to prepend the name of the move_base node onto those subscriptions. If you're using launch files from the Willow Garage repositories, that name will be "move_base_node." If you're using launch files from your own repositories that will be whatever name you decided to give the move_base node.

2. If you use the "make_plan" service provided by move_base, and your code lives outside the patched WG repository, you'll instead have to call "move_base_node/make_plan."

3. If you command the local version of move_base that operates in the odometric frame (found in 2dnav_pr2/move_base_local), and your code lives outside of the patched WG repository, you'll need to change from using local_navigation/move_base_simple/goal> to move_base_local_simple/goal.

I apologize in advance for any pain that these changes cause, but the global namespace was just getting too cluttered on our robots here at WG, and I don't expect that these changes will affect too many people. If you have any questions, concerns, or problems with the migration please don't hesitate to let me know.

Ok, that's the annoying part of this release. The exciting part of this release is its inclusion of SLAM support for the navigation stack. The costmaps now subscribe to the map as a latched topic instead of using a service call and support dynamic updates. This means, running SLAM with the navigation stack is easy, to see things in action follow these three steps:

1. Make sure you're running on the latest versions of the navigation and slam_gmapping stacks, and update in wg-ros-pkg
2. rosmake 2dnav_slam_stage
3. roslaunch 2dnav_slam_stage move_base_slam_5cm.launch (it may take a few seconds for the map to show up)

That's it, you should be able to send the robot goals in unknown space and it should build a map as it goes.

Hopefully, this release will just become navigation 1.0, but I'm going to give it the rest of the day to get some more testing in.

As always, let me know if you have any issues, questions, comments, concerns, etc.

Also, for those of you on OSX, nav_view has been patched so it should build and run correctly now.

• Full changelist
• Download

Hope all is well, Eitan