API review

Proposer: Ken Conley

Present at review:

• List reviewers

Question / concerns / comments

Enter your thoughts on the API and any questions / concerns you have here. Please sign your name. Anything you want to address in the API review should be marked down here before the start of the meeting.

kwc: As with any messages-related review, it's pretty gory. I've proposed and ticketed new manipulation, nav, and visualization message packages to offload some of the messages. I've also proposed to reinstate an experimental_msgs package to contain some future robot_msgs that are not ready for release yet. Of the remaining messages, about half I marked as 'ok' under my own intuition and half I'm still unsure about. robot_msgs has a tricky inclusion criteria that we should perhaps debate, but my general notion was:

• robot-generic
• common, shared concepts that are unspecific to a particular stack
• actual, widespread use
• stable

As prcore will necessarily need to be our most stable stack, it is important that robot_msgs not be a source of instability.

Naming Issue?:

• Point vs. Point32 (point is 64-bit)

Messages that depend on deprecated_msgs:

• OccMap2D (service-only message, can be changed)

• MapMetaData (service-only message, can be changed)

• Planner2DGoal (volatile message, can be changed, moving to nav_msgs)
• Planner2DState (volatile message, can be changed, moving to nav_msgs)
• Polyline2D (can be changed? moving to visualization_msgs)

• VisualizationMarker (can be changed? moving to visualization_msgs) (Might be nice if it uses TransformStamped. --Stu)

ok for inclusion, though must be reviewed:

• ChannelFloat32.msg

• ControllerState.msg (conor, for highlevel_controllers API)

• DiagnosticMessage.msg

• DiagnosticStatus.msg

• DiagnosticString.msg

• DiagnosticValue.msg

• MapMetaData.msg

• OccMap2D.msg

• Point.msg (Do we want separate Point and Vector3 messages? --Stu)

• Pose.msg (Do we want to keep both Pose and Transform? --Stu)

• PoseStamped.msg

• PoseWithCovariance.msg

• Quaternion.msg

• QuaternionStamped.msg

• Transform.msg

• TransformStamped.msg

• Vector3.msg

• Vector3Stamped.msg

• Twist.msg (Definite keeper. --Stu)

• Wrench.msg (Definite keeper. --Stu)

Remove (difficult):

• Acceleration.msg (Remove. Replaced by Vector3. --Stu)

• AngularAcceleration.msg (Remove. Also replaced by Vector3. --Stu)

• AngularVelocity.msg (Remove. Vector3. --Stu)

• PoseDDot.msg (Remove. Replaced by Twist. --Stu)

• PoseDot.msg (Remove. Replaced by Twist. --Stu)

• PoseWithRatesStamped.msg (Replace with a message that uses the Twist msg instead of PoseDot. --Stu)

• Velocity.msg (Remove. Replaced by Vector3. --Stu) -- I'm not sure I agree with all of this block. Stu's proposals lose a lot of type information. --Tully

TBD:

• MechanismState:

  • ActuatorState.msg (Add a 'zero_offset' field. Needed to convert encoder data into joint angles --Vijay)

  • JointState.msg

• AudioRawStream.msg (audio_capture?)

• BatteryState.msg

• CollisionMap.msg (manip?)

• JointCmd.msg

• JointTraj.msg (manip?)

• JointTrajPoint.msg (manip?)

• OrientedBoundingBox.msg (goes with CollisionMap)

• ParticleCloud.msg

• Point32.msg

• PointCloud.msg

• PointStamped.msg

• Polygon3D.msg

• PolygonalMap.msg

• PoseConstraint.msg (manip?)

• PositionMeasurement.msg (people tracking)

• TaskFrameFormalism.msg

Messages to remove or find a home for:

• VOPose

joint_qualification_controllers http://wgs10.willowgarage.com/trac/personalrobots/ticket/1025

• TestData

experimental_msgs:

• Ioan and Sachin will migrate to these, someday. When they do, they can be moved back to robot_msgs

  • TrajectoryPoint.msg (unused)

  • RobotTrajectory.msg (unused)

mocap_msgs (phase_space, openrave_planning):

• MocapBody

• MocapMarker

• MocapSnapshot

nav_msgs http://wgs10.willowgarage.com/trac/personalrobots/ticket/1024

• Planner2DGoal
• Planner2DState

foo_manipulation_msgs http://wgs10.willowgarage.com/trac/personalrobots/ticket/1020:

• AttachedObject.msg

• CollisionMap?

• OutletPose

• ObjectOnTable

• Table
• Door

• DisplayKinematicPath.msg

• KinematicConstraints.msg

• KinematicPath.msg

• KinematicPlanLinkPositionRequest.msg

• KinematicPlanStateRequest.msg

• KinematicPlanStatus.msg

• KinematicSpaceParameters.msg

• KinematicState.msg

• NamedKinematicPath.msg

• NamedKinematicState.msg

• PoseConstraint.msg?

• JointTraj.msg (manip?)

• JointTrajPoint.msg (manip?)

visualization_msgs http://wgs10.willowgarage.com/trac/personalrobots/ticket/1023

• VisualizationMarker

• Polyline2D

Meeting agenda

To be filled out by proposer based on comments gathered during API review period

Conclusion

Package status change mark change manifest)

• Action items that need to be taken.

• Major issues that need to be resolved

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