Armin,

It should be possible to run the navfn planner on a static map without
running move_base. Can you try bringing up the costmap with the attached
parameters. I've tested this configuration on my machine and it brings up a
costmap of a static map just fine.

There aren't any tutorials that deal with path planning alone, although
there is extensive documentation on both NavfnROS (
http://www.ros.org/wiki/navfn) and Costmap2DROS (
http://www.ros.org/wiki/costmap_2d) which are the two components of the
navigation stack you want to link together. Basically, you'll create a node
that holds a Costmap2DROS object which is passed to a NavfnROS object for
planning. You can always look at the source code for move_base to get an
idea of what you need to do, though move_base uses a plugin architecture
which means it will never refer to a NavfnROS planner explicitly. Instead,
it will refer to a BaseGlobalPlanner instance that NavfnROS inherits from,
but the API will be the same.

Hope this helps,

Eitan

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Armin Hornung <
HornungA@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I wonder where to start to set up a simple navigation that runs without
> move_base, in particular a global path planner. For a start, a simple A*
> on a static map should suffice. From what I've read, costmap_2d and
> navfn should provide the right functionality, but do they without a
> running robot? They seem to be tightly coupled with move_base and
> constant sensor updates.
>
> I tried just running costmap_2d_node, setting static_map: true and
> map_type: costmap. The remainder of the example configuration file in
> the costmap node stayed unchanged. After publishing a static tf from
> /map => base_link the node requests the map from the map server, I see
> "[DEBUG] 1270726860.099638000: Map update time: 0.000677000", and that's
> it. I would have expected to get an obstacle map as depicted in
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/costmap_2d, but
> /costmap_node/costmap/inflated_obstacles (and the other published
> topics) are never sent out. Is there something obvious missing?
>
> Are there any starting points or tutorials dealing with path planning
> alone (i.e. just the global planner)? Does that work with just a static
> map on a node level at all, or should I write my own using the APIs of
> navfn and costmap_2d?
>
> Thanks & best regards,
> Armin
>
> --
> Armin Hornung                              Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
> www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~hornunga<http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/%7Ehornunga>  Dept. of Computer Science
> HornungA@informatik.uni-freiburg.de        Humanoid Robots Lab
> Tel.: +49 (0)761-203-8010                  Georges-Köhler-Allee 79
> Fax : +49 (0)761-203-8007                  D-79110 Freiburg, Germany
>
> _______________________________________________
> ros-users mailing list
> ros-users@code.ros.org
> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>