How to evaluation the mapping result with Gazebo world

[TouchDeeper]

Dear Mathieu,
Hello,

As the subject said, how can I evaluation the mapping result with the Gazebo world?

Best regards,
Tingda

[matlabbe]

Hi Tingda,

It depends on what is available for you in the simulation. You can see an example in this post: https://answers.ros.org/question/333424/how-to-compare-the-slam-trajectory-with-simulation-ground-truth/

On another project, we created a node to subscribe to /gazebo/link_states topic and then broadcast a TF between /world and /base_link_gt (the later corresponding to base frame /base_link of the robot in the link_states). To save the ground truth in rtabmap node for evaluation like in the link above, we set parameters "ground_truth_frame_id" and "ground_truth_base_frame_id" to "world" and "base_link_gt" respectively.

<node pkg="rtabmap_ros" type="rtabmap" name="rtabmap">
   <param name="frame_id" value="base_link"/>
   <param name="ground_truth_frame_id" value="world"/>
   <param name="ground_truth_base_frame_id" value="base_link_gt"/>
   ...
</node>

For convenience to see ground truth and estimated frames at the same time in RVIZ, make sure to link world to map frame:

<node pkg="tf" type="static_transform_publisher" name="worldtomap_broadcaster" args="0 0 0 0 0 0 1 world map 100" />

cheers,
Mathieu

[TouchDeeper]

Dear Mathieu,

Thank you for your reply. I will try the method. What's more, how to evaluate the dense map made by RTAB-Map? I find there is a way to generate ground truth maps from the world of Gazebo,

Best regards,
Tingda

[matlabbe]

Hi,

To compare clouds, you may use CloudCompare. There is a tool to estimate distance between two clouds.

You could export the cloud from rtabmap, and the ground truth cloud from voxblox, then compare in CloudCompare.

cheers,
Mathieu

[TouchDeeper]

Hello Mathieu,

Thank you for your advice? I will give it a try.

Best regards,
Tingda