A Personalized Comfort Space with Variable Shape Based on Environmental Information for Robot Navigation in Homes

1. ROS interface

This plugin takes the comfort distance, the pose, and velocity of human as inputs, and implements our comfort spaces as a layer of the costmap. The input variables are fed to the program based on ROS topic /people_features.

The type of /people_features is the message people_domestic_features.

/people_domestic_features:

std_msgs/Header header
person_domestic_features[] people

/person_domestic_features:

string              name
geometry_msgs/Point position
geometry_msgs/Point velocity
float64             alpha

The plugin outputs the comfort spaces to the costmap.

2. Usage of the plugin

1. Compile this folder using the Catkin system of ROS.

2. Insert the following two pieces of code into the configuration file of .yaml corresponding to costmap_2d package.

- name: csce_domestic_social_layer
type: 'domestic_social_navigation_layers_csce::Personalspace'

csce_domestic_social_layer:
enabled: true

For example:

local_costmap:
  plugins:
    - name: obstacle_laser_layer
      type: 'costmap_2d::ObstacleLayer'
    - name: csce_domestic_social_layer
      type: 'domestic_social_navigation_layers_csce::Personalspace'
    - name: inflation_layer
      type: 'costmap_2d::InflationLayer'

local_costmap:
  map_type: costmap
  global_frame    : odom
  robot_base_frame: base_footprint
  update_frequency : 5.0
  publish_frequency: 1.0
  static_map    : false
  rolling_window: true
  width         : 4.0
  height        : 4.0
  resolution    : 0.025
  robot_radius: 0.275
  obstacle_laser_layer:
    enabled: true
    observation_sources: base_scan
    combination_method: 0 # can erase static layer
    base_scan:
      sensor_frame: base_laser_link
      data_type: LaserScan
      topic: scan
      expected_update_rate: 0.3
      observation_persistence: 0.0
      inf_is_valid: true
      marking: true
      clearing: true
      raytrace_range: 4.0
      obstacle_range: 3.0
  csce_domestic_social_layer:
    enabled: true
  inflation_layer:
    enabled            : true
    inflation_radius   : 0.55
    cost_scaling_factor: 5.0


global_costmap:
  plugins:
    - name: static_layer
      type: 'costmap_2d::StaticLayer'
    - name: obstacle_laser_layer
      type: 'costmap_2d::ObstacleLayer'
    - name: csce_domestic_social_layer
      type: 'domestic_social_navigation_layers_csce::Personalspace'
    - name: inflation_layer
      type: 'costmap_2d::InflationLayer'

global_costmap:
  map_type: costmap
  global_frame    : map
  robot_base_frame: base_footprint
  update_frequency : 10.0
  publish_frequency: 1.0
  transform_tolerance: 0.2
  track_unknown_space: true
  unknown_cost_value : 255
  robot_radius: 0.275
  static_layer:
    enabled  : true
    map_topic: map
  obstacle_laser_layer:
    enabled: true
    observation_sources: base_scan
    combination_method: 0 # can erase static layer
    base_scan:
      sensor_frame: base_laser_link
      data_type: LaserScan
      topic: scan
      expected_update_rate: 0.3
      observation_persistence: 0.0
      inf_is_valid: true
      marking: true
      clearing: true
      raytrace_range: 4.0
      obstacle_range: 3.0
  csce_domestic_social_layer:
    enabled: true
  inflation_layer:
    enabled            : true
    inflation_radius   : 0.55
    cost_scaling_factor: 25.0
     
   rostopic pub /people_features dostic_social_navigation_layers_csce/people_domestic_features "header:
  seq: 0
  stamp:
    secs: 0
    nsecs: 0
  frame_id: 'map'
people:
- name: '1'
  position:
    x: -0.924268356214
    y: 0.126892251649
    z: 0.0
  velocity:
    x: 0.8
    y: 0.0
    z: 0.0
  alpha: 1.0"
      

3. Send input data to plugins through detection programs, scripts or terminal commands.

3.Videos of comfort space navigation

• Some examples of transient navigation are shown in ./video/transient_spaces-1.mp4.
• Some examples of dynamic navigation are shown in ./video/dynamic_spaces-1.mp4.