[ros-users] Standard GPS Message

Bill Morris morris at ee.ccny.cuny.edu
Fri Oct 8 18:58:33 UTC 2010


On Thu, 2010-09-16 at 11:16 -0500, Jack O'Quin wrote: 
> I think it's about time to resurrect this discussion about adding GPS
> messages to sensor_msgs for the Diamondback release. Getting the
> messages defined early and committed to unstable will provide people a
> chance to experiment with them before interfaces get frozen for the
> release.
> 
> I am interested in participating. Let's discuss options some more here
> on the mailing list. If there is a consensus on a fairly concrete
> approach, we could probably start a package proposal and API review on
> it soon after.

I'm interested in making this happen, and now we have a deadline.
I would like something similar to the GPSd message but with additions to
make it easier to interface to googlemaps and navigation systems.

Perhaps one approach is to break the GPS messages down into several
primitives; a point, a volume and a vector. 

I think it would be best to separate the geometry from the satellite
information. this way status information can be optional.

The next question is it worth supporting multiple datums and ellipsoids?

In addition to the messages I would like to see a gps tools package with
functions for calculation of distance, time of arrival, time to
intercept, direction to waypoint and etc.

My use case is a quadrotor helicopter that needs to fly from point A to
near point B to point C. It would also be nice for the aircraft to track
moving objects as we are looking towards implementation of swarm
control.

Eventually we are looking toward building 3D map infrastructure so that
we can have the aircraft flying in a global map, switch to a local map
as it approaches a building and switch to a floor map as it enters the
building.

Related Info

http://earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/publications/tm8358.1/toc.html
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html





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