easynav_simple_stack

SimpleMapsManager Plugin for Easy Navigation

The SimpleMapsManager plugin provides a lightweight, ROS 2-compatible map management component for the Easy Navigation (EasyNav) framework. It is based on a 2D boolean grid (SimpleMap) and is optimized for efficient updates and metric conversion. This plugin can handle both static and dynamic map layers, integrating sensor-based perception to update the dynamic map.

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Features

• Loads static maps from disk or incoming OccupancyGrid messages.
• Publishes static and dynamic map layers as nav_msgs/msg/OccupancyGrid.
• Applies sensor updates to a dynamic map layer.
• Can receive incoming maps via a subscriber interface.
• Offers a service interface to save maps to the original file path at runtime.
• Compatible with pluginlib for dynamic loading.

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Parameters

All parameters must be defined in the namespace corresponding to the plugin name (e.g., my_plugin.package, my_plugin.map_path_file):

Name	Type	Description	Default
plugin_name.package	string	Name of the ROS 2 package containing the static map file.	""
plugin_name.map_path_file	string	Path to the map file (relative to the specified package).	""

If both parameters are provided, the plugin loads the static map from the resolved file path during initialization.

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Topics

Topic	Type	Direction	Description
<node>/<plugin_name>/map	nav_msgs/msg/OccupancyGrid	Publisher	Published static map (latched).
<node>/<plugin_name>/dynamic_map	nav_msgs/msg/OccupancyGrid	Publisher	Dynamic map updated based on sensor data.
<node>/<plugin_name>/incoming_map	nav_msgs/msg/OccupancyGrid	Subscriber	Allows runtime map replacement via messages.

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Services

Service	Type	Description
<node>/<plugin_name>/savemap	std_srvs/srv/Trigger	Saves the current static map to its original path

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File Format

Map files used by SimpleMap follow a plain-text format:

<width> <height> <resolution> <origin_x> <origin_y>
0 1 1 0 0 1 ...

• The first line contains metadata: width, height, resolution (meters/cell), origin x, origin y.
• The second line is the grid content, in row-major order, using 0 for free and 1 for occupied cells.

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Example Plugin Configuration

maps_manager_node:
  ros__parameters:
    maps_manager_plugins:
      - simple
    simple:
      package: "my_maps_pkg"
      map_path_file: "maps/warehouse.map"

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Example Usage of Save Service

To save the current map to the original file location:

ros2 service call /<node>/simple/savemap std_srvs/srv/Trigger "{}"

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License

This plugin is part of the Easy Navigation (EasyNav) framework and is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.