[Nav2] Load, Save and Loop Waypoints from the Nav2 Panel in RViz

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Hello Everyone,

First of all, Happy New Year Everyone! To celebrate the New Year, @smac and the Nav2 team have decided to roll out some nice new features. You might have already seen the new navigator plugin types. Following that comes an upgrade for the Nav2 RViz plugin.

Nav2 Panel in RViz has been a great tool for monitoring and quick prototyping of various applications as it allows to perform waypoint following. I’m glad to announce that, as a further enhancement, with the recent update, the user would be able to:

  • load and save waypoints in a yaml file for waypoint following (initial pose can also be stored if required)
  • loop functionality to revisit the waypoints, can easily specify the desired number of loops
  • pause and resume button for stopping and continuing through the waypoints

Here is a small demo of all the new features:

(Yes, we have added Nav2 logo as well :raised_hands: )

Save Waypoints
rviz_save
Load Waypoints
rviz_load
Loop, pause and resume
rviz_loop

Robot used for the demo Neobotix MPO-700. Link to the Neobotix simulation package can be found here.

The waypoints are currently stored in yaml file. Looping functionality is not specific to the nav2 panel in RViz. Users utilizing nav2_waypoint_follower can take advantage of the changes made to the FollowWaypoint action, by specifying the desired number of loops in the action request that will be eventually sent to the nav2_waypoint_follower server.

We certainly believe the features added to the nav2 plugin improve the user-friendliness of RViz further for developing and prototyping applications with Nav2.

Are you interested in getting involved with Navigation2? then we have a nice follow-up issue.

Happy waypoint-following peeps!

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Hi @Pradheep_krishna where to get this

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Its already in Nav2! :slight_smile:

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On default installation there is no feature to save and load waypoint in rviz plugin as yaml files

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You can find this feature only in Iron or rolling.

If you are using Humble, I don’t think this feature got back ported to Humble.

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Thanks @Pradheep_krishna . Now I got the answer. I’m using humble that’s the reason. Now in humble I built from source with this feature branch on your repo, I got the updated rviz plugin.

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May I ask someone of you to provide an example of resulting yaml file containing the waypoints? I’m on humble so I can’t build an example by myself with less effort yet.

I’m building a node which can be used to record waypoints while operating the robot. So you teleop the robot around and every X cm (or by joystick key press), it records the pose and orientation and stores this as file.

It would be fantastic if I can load and modify the created file in RVIZ2. So my plan is to build a yaml file containing waypoints with the same format like the one you build with Nav2 Panel.