On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Stéphane Magnenat
<stephane.magnenat@mavt.ethz.ch> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am working on the release of our modular ICP pipeline [1] (2D and 3D),
> which provides a mapping-style interface. While doing so, I realized that
> some features are commonly available in mapping packages, like getting the
> latest version of the map or reseting it. However, I have not find any
> standard to do so. Worst, while for 2D there is a message nav_msgs::GetMap,
> there is no standard equivalent in 3D. To allow easy interoperability
> between packages doing the same thing, it is important to have these.
>
> So here are my suggestions:
>
> - To add a GetPointMap message similar to GetMap but taking a PointCloud2
> instead of an OccupancyGrid. This could either be added to nav_msgs or to
> something new like nav3d_msgs or map3d_msgs within common_msgs.
>
> - To define a standard interface for interacting with mapping packages. If
> we consider existing packages, (for instance gmapping, hector_mapping),
> there is a "dynamic_map" service that returns the latest map. While this
> naming is strange, it is the closest thing to a standard that we have.
> Should we extend it in 3D to have a dynamic_point_map service? Also, should
> we generalize the "syscommand" topic, which is a bit awkward, or maybe add
> something like a "reset" service? We might also want to save and load maps.
>
> Comments welcome, I think it would be great if we could improve the
> interoperability of mapping packages.

+1 Good idea.
-- 
 joq