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.
Stéphane
[1]
http://www.ros.org/wiki/modular_cloud_matcher
--
Dr Stéphane Magnenat
http://stephane.magnenat.net
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