[ros-users] Simple Navigation

[Brian Gerkey]

2011/2/18 Gonçalo Cabrita <goncabrita at gmail.com>:
> Here at the lab we use mostly the Roombas. Thanks to Eitan we
> now successfully run our Roombas with the navigation stack using a Hokuyo
> laser for obstacle detection.
> However the Roombas come equipped with many cool sensors. I was wondering if
> it would be possible to use the Roomba as is, to run a simplified version of
> the navigation stack. My idea was to publish the IR data as a point cloud
> and feed the information into move_base running solely on a local dynamic
> map, so no map server or amcl. The performance wouldn't be great for sure,
> but maybe the Roomba would be able to move around without crashing.
> What are your thoughts on that? Is it even worth a try or is it just idiotic
> ( the IR sensors have a range of about 20cm :P )?

It's interesting enough to give a try to. You could also use the bump
sensor information to produce obstacles.  They're coarse, but you can
adjust the resolution of the costmap accordingly.  I would expect the
robot to run into things, but it's a Roomba, designed to do that
right?

	brian.