Give 'manual' goal to Hector Exploration Planner

edit

Hello everyone,

I am working on a robot to make autonomous navigation in an unknown flat environment. The robot is equipped with a Hokuyo UTM-30LX and a Kinect. My ultimate goal is to make a map of the place with the identification of objects that are present. To achieve this, I use the tools provided by Hector team that really meet my needs: Hector Mapping, Hector Map Server, Hector Geotiff, Hector Trajectory Server, Hector Elevation Mapping for the Mapping part, and Hector Costmap, Hector Exploration node for the navigation part. Everything seems to work properly after my first tests.

Now - when I will found a tool to make efficient detection of objects - I would like to give a 'manual' goal for the planner. For example, if the robot recognizes objects in its database, it will go to them; otherwise the rest of the time continue the exploration. I think it will be possible - I don't know how yet - to add the position of a detected object on the map thanks to Geotiff Node and Server Map node. So instead the planner gives a pose goal to generate the path as you can see in the following video :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd2FGMBj8iw

, it may sometimes give a goal to a recognized object. I look in the source code hector_exploration_planner but I don't really know how to do. Do you have any idea?

I'm working on Ubuntu 12.04 and Groovy.

Thank you for your help,

Jeremy

Ps : Last question : do you know/have any idea for how to show the color on the map like in the Youtube video ? This colouring which seems indicate areas of importance.

Edit : I finally had the opportunity to test my implementation. Using makePlan function the robot calculates its trajectory towards my manual goal. However, there is always a call to the service GetRobotTrajectory with Hector Exploration Controller... Therefore, the robot never manages to move to my goal. Do you have an idea to fix this problem?