ROS 2D costmap layer to avoid certain areas

Question

I am trying to implement a costmap layer which would allow a robot to assign higher costs to unfavorable terrain, like patches of grass. So, the robot is still able to pass over the grass if that is what the best path involves, but it will usually try to stay off the grass if it can.

Is there any code which already implements this? I see that the ROS wiki says, "For example, if a user wants to express that a robot should attempt to avoid a particular area of a building, they may inset their own costs into the costmap for that region independent of any obstacles", so I think it should be possible.

Answer 1

You didn't mention whether you are using ROS 1 or 2 but for ROS2 there is an option in Nav2 named "Keepout Zones" that you can identify the terrain areas on a preknown map and use keepout filter to implement it in nav2. You can probably implement this in Ros1 using the same logic described in this link. https://navigation.ros.org/tutorials/docs/navigation2_with_keepout_filter.html