Revision history [back]

I fixed the calculation of the field_of_view in gazebo_ros_sonar.cpp. Thanks for reporting. Unfortunatly this is not the source of your problem.

The start and end points of each ray are calculated in gazebo's MultiRayShape.cc. I did a quick test with debug outputs to verify that the calculated directional vectors for each ray are as expected.

The gazebo_ros_sonar plugin uses Gazebo's ray sensor and gives you the minimum distance out of all rays. With the default parameters from hector_quadrotor three samples are used for both the horizontal and the vertical axis equally spaces from min_angle to max_angle. So the simulated ultrasound cone is more like a pyramid than a geometric cone. Small obstacles at larger distances might be missed. You can increase the sample count if you need higher accuracy. The calculated field_of_view for the sensor_msgs/Range message is only a very coarse approximation and the visualization in rviz might lead to the impression that the distance readings are faulty.

Although this is not really a solution to your problem, it might help to solve it.

I fixed the calculation of the field_of_view in gazebo_ros_sonar.cpp. Thanks for reporting. Unfortunatly this is not the source of your problem.

The start and end points of each ray are calculated in gazebo's MultiRayShape.cc. I did a quick test with debug outputs to verify that the calculated directional vectors for each ray are as expected.

The gazebo_ros_sonar plugin uses Gazebo's ray sensor and gives you the minimum distance out of all rays. With the default parameters from hector_quadrotor three samples are used for both the horizontal and the vertical axis equally spaces distributed from min_angle to max_angle. So the simulated ultrasound cone is more like a pyramid than a geometric cone. Small obstacles at larger distances might be missed. You can increase the sample count if you need higher accuracy. The calculated field_of_view for the sensor_msgs/Range message is only a very coarse approximation and the visualization in rviz might lead to the impression that the distance readings are faulty.

Although this is these explanations are not really a solution to your problem, it they might help to solve it.

I fixed the calculation of the field_of_view in gazebo_ros_sonar.cpp. Thanks for reporting. Unfortunatly this is not the source of your problem.

The start and end points of each ray are calculated in gazebo's MultiRayShape.cc. I did a quick test with debug outputs to verify that the calculated directional vectors for each ray are as expected.

The gazebo_ros_sonar plugin uses Gazebo's ray sensor and gives you the minimum distance out of all rays. With the default parameters from hector_quadrotor three samples are used for both the horizontal and the vertical axis equally distributed from min_angle to max_angle. So the simulated ultrasound cone is more like a pyramid than a geometric cone. Small obstacles at larger distances might be missed. You can increase the sample count if you need higher accuracy. The calculated field_of_view for the sensor_msgs/Range message is only a very coarse approximation and the visualization in rviz might lead to the impression that the distance readings are faulty.

Although these explanations are not really a solution to your problem, they might help to solve it.