Exploration Demo Not Working

[SwiftGust]

Hi,
I have encountered issue when running demo simulations on ROS Melodic (Ubuntu 18.04) following instructions
After clicking "Initialization" and "Start Planner" in order,
the exploration planner never leads vehicle to out of starting location.
It just goes back and forth in starting area
This behavior is similar in case of 'smb_sim' too.

How can I make exploration running?

Only console output to note for both cases
[GBPLANNER] Very low local gain. Triggering global planner

I'm using latest gbplanner2 branch of this repository,
resolved few compile issue other than that it is default as is.

• Case - $ roslaunch gbplanner rmf_sim.launch after 400 secs of run

• Case - $ roslaunch gbplanner smb_sim.launch after 400 secs of run

[MihirDharmadhikari]

Hi @SwiftGust

It seems like the robot does not find enough exploration gain to proceed into the environment. This is not expected.
Can you try to visualize the following topics:

• vis/planning_graph: This is the graph that the robot builds for the local planner. Check if this spans sufficiently inside the environment.
• vis/shortest_paths: This will have some red spheres showing the high volumetric gain vertices in the graph.
• vis/planning_workspace: This shows the local and global bounds used by the planner. The purple box is the local bounding box inside which the points will be sampled to build the graph that you see in `vis/planning_graph'. The brown box is the absolute global bounds of exploration.

Can you visualize these and send a screenshot of them?

Best,
Mihir

[SwiftGust]

Hi @MihirDharmadhikari

I have checked this as you mentioned and topics you mentioned are visualized by default setting (except planning_workspace topic)

Exhibit issues as follows

• vis/planning graph - frontiers/0: Uninitialized quaternion, assuming identity. Points should not be empty for specified marker type.
• vis/shortest paths - hanging_vertices/0 Uninitialized quaternion, assuming identity. Points should not be empty for specified marker type.
• vis/planning_workspace - bounding box seems covering well both for local & global

Rviz screenshot is attached below

[MihirDharmadhikari]

Seems like the planner is not able to build the graph. Are you using the default parameters? Also, had you built the code with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release?

[SwiftGust]

Hi, @MihirDharmadhikari
Sorry for late response
I have built code with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
Is this could cause a trouble? It just adds debug symbol in addition to Release mode.
I have also built it and tested in Release mode, problem persists

Workspace config is as follows

$ catkin config
--------------------------------------------------------------
Profile:                     default
Extending:        [explicit] /opt/ros/melodic
Workspace:                   /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws
--------------------------------------------------------------
Build Space:        [exists] /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws/build
Devel Space:        [exists] /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws/devel
Install Space:      [unused] /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws/install
Log Space:          [exists] /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws/logs
Source Space:       [exists] /home/swift/gbplanner2_ws/src
DESTDIR:            [unused] None
--------------------------------------------------------------
Devel Space Layout:          linked
Install Space Layout:        None
--------------------------------------------------------------
Additional CMake Args:       -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
Additional Make Args:        None
Additional catkin Make Args: None
Internal Make Job Server:    True
Cache Job Environments:      False
--------------------------------------------------------------
Whitelisted Packages:        None
Blacklisted Packages:        None
--------------------------------------------------------------
Workspace configuration appears valid.
--------------------------------------------------------------

[MihirDharmadhikari]

Hello,

I tried to reproduce this error from my side on a clean installation but was unable to reproduce this.
You can try one thing, which is setting this to Verbosity::DEBUG and see if there are any warnings or errors printed by the planner.

Best,
Mihir