Hi Brian,
 
Regarding the amcl initial pose, is it something that I can set and reset at any point? For example, if amcl has already generated a particle cloud, would sending a pose via the initial pose topic regenerate the particle cloud with less uncertainty?
 
Is there a way of adding noise to the laser scans?
 
Thanks,
Alexis Cheng
Electrical Engineering
University of British Columbia
 
On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Alexis Cheng <acheng_1221@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to simulate the ability to decrease the size of the amcl particle
> cloud. Is there any way to increase the quality of the laser scans or
> decrease the error of the amcl particle cloud during runtime? Thank you in
> advance.

hi Alexis,

I'm not sure what you mean by increasing the quality of the laser
scans. The scan data coming from stageros is as good as the
underlying simulation can provide. There's no noise added.

As for amcl, you can reduce its uncertainty by setting a pose, via the
'initialpose' topic. It's of type
geometry_msgs/PoseWithCovarianceStamped, which includes covariance
values. You cannot set the covariance independently of the pose,
however.

brian.