Contents
General Description
This package proposes a reusable, generic and modular navigation software architecture. It is built as a framework library for c++ and it is based on generic programming through c++ templates. This can help to solve some important and prone problems like the semantic coherence in the reutilization of navigation components.
Example:
template<typename StateType, typename ObstaclesType, typename ActionType, typename GoalType, typename TTime> class NavigationNode; //specific templated navigation node class DwaNavigationNode: public NavigationNode<DynamicState2D, pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXY>, Twist2D, Pose2D, ros::Time> DwaNavigationNode;
A reusable architecture should be applicable to many different contexts (world models, kinematic constraints, state representation, world models, asynchronous communications, etc.). Current mobile robot navigation architectures are built on software forces the developer to use a set of the data types for the representation of concepts like the state, the obstacle world model or the goal (the ROS navigation stack is one example).
Some planning algorithms cannot be built over these data type constraints because they contradict the own nature of the algorithm. For instance, an obstacle algorithm avoidance that uses point clouds to represent obstacles cannot be built over the ROS navigation stack since it is high coupled with the grid-based costmap world model, another example is if the obstacle avoidance algorithm accepts multiple goals or a probabilistic description of the goal.
Note: This is still an unestable component in development. For an stable API see the standard [navigation]. Here an example of navigation node developed with this framework it is shown:
Note: this software is still in active delopment and will be renamed soon to RNTL: mobile Robot Navigation Template Library.