Launching

You have your robot, your map, your localization and navigation nodes. Let’s launch it all and test it!

First, launch the simulation:

$ cd /home/workspace/catkin_ws/
$ roslaunch <YOUR PACKAGE NAME> <YOUR WORLD>.launch

In a new terminal, launch the amcl launch file:

$ roslaunch <YOUR PACKAGE NAME> amcl.launch

Rviz Configuration

As you did in a previous section, setup your RViz by adding the necessary displays and selecting the required topics to visualize the robot and also the map.

Add by display type

In Rviz,

• Select odom for fixed frame
• Click the “Add” button and
  • add RobotModel : this would add the robot itself to RViz
  • add Map and select first topic/map : the second and third topics in the list will show the global costmap, and the local costmap. Both can be helpful to tune your parameters
  • add PoseArray and select topic/particlecloud : this will display a set of arrows around the robot

Each arrow is essentially a particle defining the pose of the robot that your localization package created. Your goal is to add/tune the parameters that will help localize your robot better and thereby improve the pose array.

Note: You can save the above RViz setup in a configuration file and launch RViz with the same configuration every time. This will make the process more efficient for you! Click file -> save config to save the current configuration.

Add by topic

When adding elements to RViz, you could also select By topic tab. Here, all valid topics would be displayed and you could locate what you need faster!

Transform Timeout and Map Update Loop

If you received warning on Transform Timeout and Map Update Loop , you might want to configure the corresponding parameters. Namely larger transform_tolerance value for the AMCL node and lower update_frequency & publish_frequency values in the configuration files.