Gazebo simulator plugin to automatically generate a 2D occupancy map from the simulated world at a given certain height.
This plugin was adapted from the octomap plugin from ETH Zürich.
Check out the plugin in your catkin_ws and build it with catkin_make.
To include the plugin, add the following line in between the <world> </world> tags of your Gazebo world file:
<plugin name='gazebo_occupancy_map' filename='libgazebo_2Dmap_plugin.so'>
<map_resolution>0.1</map_resolution> <!-- in meters, optional, default 0.1 -->
<map_height>0.3</map_height> <!-- in meters, optional, default 0.3 -->
<map_size_x>10</map_size_x> <!-- in meters, optional, default 10 -->
<map_size_y>10</map_size_y> <!-- in meters, optional, default 10 -->
<init_robot_x>0</init_robot_x> <!-- x coordinate in meters, optional, default 0 -->
<init_robot_y>0</init_robot_y> <!-- y coordinate in meters, optional, default 0 -->
</plugin>
To generate the map, call the /gazebo_2Dmap_plugin/generate_map ros service:
rosservice call /gazebo_2Dmap_plugin/generate_map
The generated map is published on the /map2d ros topic.
You can use the map_saver node from the map_server package inside ros navigation to save your generated map to a .pgm and .yaml file:
rosrun map_server map_saver -f <mapname> /map:=/map2d
The last map generated with the /gazebo_2Dmap_plugin/generate_map call is saved.
- To identify the connected free space the robot would discover during mapping, the plugin performs a wavefront exploration along the occupancy grid starting from the origin of the gazebo world coordinate system. Please ensure that the corresponding cell is in the continuous free space.
- The plugin will map all objects in the world, including the robot. Remove all unwanted objects before creating the map.