ROS to ROS 2 Navigation

move_base has been split into multiple components. Rather than a single monolithic state machine, navigation 2 makes use of action servers and ROS 2’s low-latency, reliable communication to separate ideas. A behavior tree is used to orchestrate these tasks. This allows Navigation2 to have highly configurable navigation behavior without programming by rearranging tasks in a behavior tree xml file.

The nav2_bt_navigator replaces move_base at the top level, with an Action interface to complete a navigation task with a tree-based action model. It uses Behavior Trees to make it possible to have more complex state machines and to add in behaviors as additional Action Servers. These behavior trees are configurable XMLs and we provide several starting examples.

The planning, behaviors, smoother, and controller servers are also action servers that the BT navigator can call to compute. All 4 servers can host many plugins of many algorithms each and individually called from the navigation behavior tree for specific behaviors. These servers are called from the BT navigator through their action servers to compute a result or complete a task. The state is maintained by the BT navigator behavior tree.

All these changes make it possible to replace any of these nodes at launch/run time with any other algorithm that implements that same interface. See each package README.md for more details.

Move Base -> Navigation2 Overview

Note: nav2_simple_navigator no longer exists, it has been replaced by nav2_bt_navigator.

In Summary:

Ported packages:

  • amcl: Ported to nav2_amcl

  • map_server: Ported to nav2_map_server

  • nav2_planner: Replaces global_planner, hosts N planner plugins

  • nav2_controller: Replaces local_planner, hosts N controller plugins

  • Navfn: Ported to nav2_navfn_planner

  • DWB: Replaces DWA and ported to ROS 2 under nav2_dwb_controller metapackage

  • nav_core: Ported as nav2_core with updates to interfaces

  • costmap_2d: Ported as nav2_costmap_2d

New packages:

  • nav2_bt_navigator: replaces move_base state machine

  • nav2_lifecycle_manager: Handles the server program lifecycles

  • nav2_waypoint_follower: Can take in many waypoints to execute a complex task through

  • nav2_system_tests: A set of integration tests for CI and basic tutorials in simulation

  • nav2_rviz_plugins: An rviz plugin to control the Navigation2 servers, command, cancel, and navigation with

  • navigation2_behavior_trees: wrappers for the behavior tree library to call ROS action servers

among many others.