API review

Proposer: Brian Gerkey

Present at review:

• List reviewers

We're reviewing the ROS API of the slam_gmapping node:

• http://www.ros.org/wiki/gmapping#slam_gmapping

Question / concerns / comments

Enter your thoughts on the API and any questions / concerns you have here. Please sign your name. Anything you want to address in the API review should be marked down here before the start of the meeting.

Eric - This all looks good to me. Two questions below, but I don't think there's anything to do in response to either of them.

• How do you know when it's done and if it worked correctly? Is the assumption that the user makes that determination based on when they've fed "enough data" into it, and that when there are errors they will be printed to the console? The main case I'd be worried about is if the mapping algorithm isn't keeping up with new data coming in.

  • You don't know whether it worked correctly, except to look at the resulting map, and judge it to be good enough, or not. As for not keeping up with incoming data, the underlying algorithm throws away most of the scans anyway, requiring that the robot has moved a certain distance before processing a scan. So that shouldn't be an issue, unless the robot is moving really, really fast.

• How do you "reset" the map to try again if something messes up the map while you're running? Does re-starting the node do that properly?

  • There's no way to reset the internal state of the node without restarting it. Restarting it will indeed destroy that state.

Meeting agenda

To be filled out by proposer based on comments gathered during API review period

Conclusion

Stack status change mark change manifest)

• Action items that need to be taken.

• Major issues that need to be resolved