RRT global planner

This is a new global planner plugin for ROS that uses the Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRT) algorithm to plan a path for the robot. The plugin is implemented in C++ and is designed to be used with the navigation stack of ROS.

Note

The plugin was created and tested in the ROS noetic version and might not work in other distributions.

Features

• The plugin can be easily configured using ROS parameters.
• The tree generated by the RRT algorithm can be visualized for debugging and analysis.
• The plugin provides metrics such as path length, computation time, number of nodes and path quality.

Intallation

1. Install the turtlebot simulation, SLAM(optional) and Navigation packages in your machine by following instructions provided in the E-manual

2. You can also use the SLAM node for mapping your map

3. Next, clone this repository into the 'src' directory of your catkin workspace.

cd catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/patweatharva/new_global_planner.git

4. Build the package using catkin_make in the terminal

5. Add the plugin to the global_planner parameter in the move_base launch file of the turtlebot package.

<param name="global_planner" value="new_global_planner/NewGlobalPlanner"/>

The plugin can be configured using the following parameters:

Configuration

• tolerance (default: 0.05): The tolerance for the goal position.
• K_in (default: 4000): The maximum number of iterations of the RRT algorithm.
• d (default: 0.2): The distance between the newly generated point and the nearest point in the tree.
• viz_tree (default: true): A flag to enable/disable visualization of the tree.

These parameters can be set in the move_base launch file or in a separate configuration file.

Usage

The plugin can be used by running the move_base node, which is part of the navigation stack. The robot will start moving towards the goal position and the plugin will continuously plan a path for the robot.

Metrics

The plugin provides the following metrics:

• pathLength : The length of the final path.
• computationTime: The time taken to compute the path.
• numNodes : The number of nodes in the final tree.
• pathQuality : The quality of the path (measured by a user-defined metric).

These metrics can be accessed using the /new_global_planner/metrics topic.

Support

Please open an issue if you have any questions or encounter any problems with the plugin.

Contributions

All contributions are welcome! If you would like to contribute to the plugin, please fork this repository and submit a pull request.

References

• S.M. LaValle and J.J. Kuffner, "Rapidly-exploring random trees: A new tool for path planning," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, vol. 3, pp. 995-1001, 2000.

• R. Kuffner and J. LaValle, "RRT-connect: An efficient approach to single-query path planning," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, vol. 3, pp. 2152-2157, 2004.

• R. Kuffner and J. LaValle, "RRT-star: An efficient approach to single-query path planning," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, vol. 3, pp. 995-1001, 2010.

Contribution

If you want to contribute to this project, you are most welcome. Just fork the repo and make a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contact

If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact me at patweatharva@gmail.com