Grid Map
Overview
This is a C++ library with ROS interface to manage two-dimensional grid maps with multiple data layers. It is designed for mobile robotic mapping to store data such as elevation, variance, color, friction coefficient, foothold quality, surface normal, traversability etc. It is used in theRobot-Centric Elevation Mapping package designed for rough terrain navigation.
Features:
- Multi-layered:Developed for universal 2.5-dimensional grid mapping with support for any number of layers.
- Efficient map re-positioning:Data storage is implemented as two-dimensional circular buffer. This allows for non-destructive shifting of the map's position (e.g. to follow the robot) without copying data in memory.
- Based on Eigen:Grid map data is stored asEigen data types. Users can apply available Eigen algorithms directly to the map data for versatile and efficient data manipulation.
- Convenience functions:Several helper methods allow for convenient and memory safe cell data access. For example, iterator functions for rectangular, circular, polygonal regions and lines are implemented.
- ROS interface:Grid maps can be directly converted to and from ROS message types such as PointCloud2, OccupancyGrid, GridCells, and our custom GridMap message.
- OpenCV interface:Grid maps can be seamlessly converted from and toOpenCV image types to make use of the tools provided byOpenCV.
- Visualizations:Thegrid_map_rviz_pluginrenders grid maps as 3d surface plots (height maps) inRViz. Additionally, thegrid_map_visualizationpackage helps to visualize grid maps as point clouds, occupancy grids, grid cells etc.
The grid map package has been tested with ROS Indigo, Jade (under Ubuntu 14.04) and Kinetic (under Ubuntu 16.04). This is research code, expect that it changes often and any fitness for a particular purpose is disclaimed.
The source code is released under a BSD 3-Clause license.
Author: Péter Fankhauser
Maintainer: Péter Fankhauser, pfankhauser@ethz.chWith contributions by: Martin Wermelinger, Philipp Krüsi, Remo Diethelm, Ralph Kaestner, Elena Stumm, Dominic Jud, Daniel Stonier, Christos Zalidis
Affiliation: Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
Publications
If you use this work in an academic context, please cite the following publication(s):
P. Fankhauser and M. Hutter,"A Universal Grid Map Library: Implementation and Use Case for Rough Terrain Navigation",in Robot Operating System (ROS) – The Complete Reference (Volume 1), A. Koubaa (Ed.), Springer, 2016. (PDF)
@incollection{Fankhauser2016GridMapLibrary,
author = {Fankhauser, Péter and Hutter, Marco},
booktitle = {Robot Operating System (ROS) – The Complete Reference (Volume 1)},
title = {{A Universal Grid Map Library: Implementation and Use Case for Rough Terrain Navigation}},
chapter = {5},
editor = {Koubaa, Anis},
publisher = {Springer},
year = {2016},
isbn = {978-3-319-26052-5},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-26054-9{\_}5},
url = {http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319260525}
}
Documentation
An introduction to the grid map library including a tutorial is given in this book chapter.
The C++ API is documented here:
Installation
Installation from Packages
To install all packages from the grid map library as Debian packages use
sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-grid-map
Building from Source
Dependencies
The grid_map_core package depends only on the linear algebra library Eigen.
sudo apt-get install libeigen3-dev
The grid_map_cv package depends additionally on OpenCV.
The other packages depend additionally on the ROS standard installation (roscpp, tf, filters, sensor_msgs, nav_msgs, and cv_bridge).
Building
To build from source, clone the latest version from this repository into your catkin workspace and compile the package using
cd catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ethz-asl/grid_map.git
cd ../
catkin_make
To maximize performance, make sure to build in Release mode. You can specify the build type by setting
catkin_make -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
Packages Overview
This repository consists of following packages:
- grid_mapis the meta-package for the grid map library.
- grid_map_coreimplements the algorithms of the grid map library. It provides the
GridMap
class and several helper classes such as the iterators. This package is implemented withoutROS dependencies. - grid_map_rosis the main package forROS dependent projects using the grid map library. It provides the interfaces to convert grid maps from and to severalROS message types.
- grid_map_cvprovides conversions of grid maps from and toOpenCV image types.
- grid_map_msgsholds theROS message and service definitions around the [grid_map_msg/GridMap] message type.
- grid_map_rviz_pluginis anRViz plugin to visualize grid maps as 3d surface plots (height maps).
- grid_map_visualizationcontains a node written to convert GridMap messages to otherROS message types for example for visualization inRViz.
- grid_map_filtersbuilds on the ROSfilters package to process grid maps as a sequence of filters.
- grid_map_demoscontains several nodes for demonstration purposes.
Unit Tests
Run the unit tests with
catkin_make run_tests_grid_map_core run_tests_grid_map_ros
or
catkin build grid_map --no-deps --verbose --catkin-make-args run_tests
if you are using catkin tools.
Usage
Demonstrations
The grid_map_demos package contains several demonstration nodes. Use this code to verify your installation of the grid map packages and to get you started with your own usage of the library.
simple_demo demonstrates a simple example for using the grid map library. This ROS node creates a grid map, adds data to it, and publishes it. To see the result in RViz, execute the command
roslaunch grid_map_demos simple_demo.launch
tutorial_demo is an extended demonstration of the library's functionalities. Launch thetutorial_demo with
roslaunch grid_map_demos tutorial_demo.launch
iterators_demo showcases the usage of the grid map iterators. Launch it with
roslaunch grid_map_demos iterators_demo.launch
image_to_gridmap_demo demonstrates how to convert data from animage to a grid map. Start the demonstration with
roslaunch grid_map_demos image_to_gridmap_demo.launch
opencv_demo demonstrates map manipulations with help ofOpenCV functions. Start the demonstration with
roslaunch grid_map_demos opencv_demo.launch
resolution_change_demo shows how the resolution of a grid map can be changed with help of theOpenCV image scaling methods. The see the results, use
roslaunch grid_map_demos resolution_change_demo.launch
Conventions & Definitions
Iterators
The grid map library contains various iterators for convenience.
Grid map | Submap | Circle | Line | Polygon |
| | | | |
Ellipse | Spiral | |||
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Using the iterator in a for
loop is common. For example, iterate over the entire grid map with theGridMapIterator
with
for (grid_map::GridMapIterator iterator(map); !iterator.isPastEnd(); ++iterator) {
cout << "The value at index " << (*iterator).transpose() << " is " << map.at("layer", *iterator) << endl;
}
The other grid map iterators follow the same form. You can find more examples on how to use the different iterators in theiterators_demo node.
Note: For maximum efficiency when using iterators, it is recommended to locally store direct access to the data layers of the grid map withgrid_map::Matrix& data = map["layer"]
outside the for
loop:
grid_map::Matrix& data = map["layer"];
for (GridMapIterator iterator(map); !iterator.isPastEnd(); ++iterator) {
const Index index(*iterator);
cout << "The value at index " << index.transpose() << " is " << data(index(0), index(1)) << endl;
}
You can find a benchmarking of the performance of the iterators in the iterator_benchmark
node of thegrid_map_demos
package which can be run with
rosrun grid_map_demos iterator_benchmark
Beware that while iterators are convenient, it is often the cleanest and most efficient to make use of the built-inEigen methods. Here are some examples:
Setting a constant value to all cells of a layer:
map["layer"].setConstant(3.0);
Adding two layers:
map["sum"] = map["layer_1"] + map["layer_2"];
Scaling a layer:
map["layer"] = 2.0 * map["layer"];
Max. values between two layers:
map["max"] = map["layer_1"].cwiseMax(map["layer_2"]);
Compute the root mean squared error:
map.add("error", (map.get("layer_1") - map.get("layer_2")).cwiseAbs());
unsigned int nCells = map.getSize().prod();
double rootMeanSquaredError = sqrt((map["error"].array().pow(2).sum()) / nCells);
Changing the Position of the Map
There are two different methods to change the position of the map:
-
setPosition(...)
: Changes the position of the map without changing data stored in the map. This changes the corresponce between the data and the map frame. -
move(...)
: Relocates the grid map such that the corresponce between data and the map frame does not change. Data in the overlapping region before and after the position change remains stored. Data that falls outside of the map at its new position is discarded. Cells that cover previously unknown regions are emptied (set to nan). The data storage is implemented as two-dimensional circular buffer to minimize computational effort.
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Packages
grid_map_rviz_plugin
This RViz plugin visualizes a grid map layer as 3d surface plot (height map). A separate layer can be chosen as layer for the color information.
grid_map_visualization
This node subscribes to a topic of type grid_map_msgs/GridMap and publishes messages that can be visualized in RViz. The published topics of the visualizer can be fully configure with a YAML parameter file. Any number of visualizations with different parameters can be added. An example ishere for the configuration file of the tutorial_demo.
Point cloud | Vectors | Occupancy grid | Grid cells |
| | | |
Parameters
grid_map_topic
(string, default: "/grid_map")The name of the grid map topic to be visualized. See below for the description of the visualizers.
Subscribed Topics
/grid_map
(grid_map_msgs/GridMap)The grid map to visualize.
Published Topics
The published topics are configured with the YAML parameter file. Possible topics are:
point_cloud
(sensor_msgs/PointCloud2)Shows the grid map as a point cloud. Select which layer to transform as points with the
layer
parameter.name: elevation
type: point_cloud
params:
layer: elevation
flat: false # optional
flat_point_cloud
(sensor_msgs/PointCloud2)Shows the grid map as a "flat" point cloud, i.e. with all points at the same heightz. This is convenient to visualize 2d maps or images (or even video streams) inRViz with help of its
Color Transformer
. The parameter height
determines the desiredz-position of the flat point cloud.name: flat_grid
type: flat_point_cloud
params:
height: 0.0Note: In order to omit points in the flat point cloud from empty/invalid cells, specify the layers which should be checked for validity with
setBasicLayers(...)
.
vectors
(visualization_msgs/Marker)Visualizes vector data of the grid map as visual markers. Specify the layers which hold thex-, y-, and z-components of the vectors with the
layer_prefix
parameter. The parameter position_layer
defines the layer to be used as start point of the vectors.name: surface_normals
type: vectors
params:
layer_prefix: normal_
position_layer: elevation
scale: 0.06
line_width: 0.005
color: 15600153 # red
occupancy_grid
(nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid)Visualizes a layer of the grid map as occupancy grid. Specify the layer to be visualized with the
layer
parameter, and the upper and lower bound with data_min
anddata_max
.name: traversability_grid
type: occupancy_grid
params:
layer: traversability
data_min: -0.15
data_max: 0.15
grid_cells
(nav_msgs/GridCells)Visualizes a layer of the grid map as grid cells. Specify the layer to be visualized with the
layer
parameter, and the upper and lower bounds with lower_threshold
andupper_threshold
.name: elevation_cells
type: grid_cells
params:
layer: elevation
lower_threshold: -0.08 # optional, default: -inf
upper_threshold: 0.08 # optional, default: inf
region
(visualization_msgs/Marker)Shows the boundary of the grid map.
name: map_region
type: map_region
params:
color: 3289650
line_width: 0.003
Note: Color values are in RGB form as concatenated integers (for each channel value 0-255). The values can be generated likethis as an example for the color green (red: 0, green: 255, blue: 0).
Build Status
Devel Job Status
Release Job Status
Bugs & Feature Requests
Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker.