Unable to move turtlebot or create map when using custom world in Gazebo

Question

Hi,

I am new to using ROS (and Ubuntu) and am reaching out as I've hit a snag. I am trying to use the rtabmap_ros tutorial for mapping and navigation using turtlebot (the simulation portion) and am able to successfully create a map when using:

$roslaunch turtlebot_gazebo turtlebot_world.launch

$ roslaunch rtabmap_ros demo_turtlebot_mapping.launch simulation:=true

$ roslaunch rtabmap_ros demo_turtlebot_rviz.launch

However, when trying the same with a custom world that I've created, the world launches in Gazebo but

roslaunch rtabmap_ros demo_turtlebot_mapping.launch simulation:=true g 

throws the following error:

Could not get transform from odom to base_footprint after 0.200000 seconds (for stamp=1466.802000)! Error="Could not find a connection between 'odom' and 'base_footprint' because they are not part of the same tree.Tf has two or more unconnected trees.. canTransform returned after 0.2 timeout was 0.2.

I used

rosrun tf view_frames

and see that odom is not connected to base_footprint. I am not sure how to rectify this.

I am essentially trying to simulate a turtlebot and make it autonomously (without having to use any manual intervention) move around an unknown location and create a map (SLAM) using Gazebo. If there are existing packages or codes that could help me with this please point me in the right direction. I use ROS Kinetic and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Best regards, Malar.

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Originally posted by MalarJN on ROS Answers with karma: 25 on 2019-07-01

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by kurshakuz on 2019-07-01:
You forgot to include your error message, can you add it now?

Answer 1

Hi,

So, I tried this with a different custom world and it worked. The issue seems to occur when you add a standing person when creating the world in Gazebo. Also, as @matlabbe suggested here, I used frontier_exploration to make the process autonomous. Giving the setup more time to execute builds a map of the Gazebo world. Thank you @matlabbe for all your help. Best regards, Malar.

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Originally posted by MalarJN with karma: 25 on 2019-07-10

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0