schedule visualizer

[txlei]

registered a participant and set its trajectories using rmf_traffic but using the rmf_schedule_visualizer in rviz, the participant's trajectory is not reflected. Checked the /schedule_markers topic and it did not publish any info. Suspect that the participant is not in the schedule database. I tried sending request loop for a robot whose path include the participant's location but I did not see any attempt to start negotiation.

I use office.launch.xml from rmf_demos as my environment and ros2 run a participant node in the same workspace.

Could you advise another method to check whether the participant schedule is registered where other fleets "know" this participant so it could prevent conflict if needed. Might be my understanding is not correct either.

[codebot]

are you using a custom fleet adapter, or the rmf_demos configuration?

[txlei]

i am not using the fleet adapter library to create my custom participant (not a fleet, but an obstacle). for my testing, yes, i am using the rmf_demos configs.

[mxgrey]

Most of the time when a participant isn't appearing in the visualizer, it's because they are setting their itinerary using a different reference frame for time than what the visualizer is using (e.g. the participant is using system time while the schedule is visualizing simulation time).

To ensure consistent time frames, I recommend always taking the value of rclcpp::Node::now and passing it through rmf_traffic_ros2::convert to get the appropriate rmf_traffic::Time value to pass onto your rmf_traffic::schedule::Participant. After that, make sure all your ROS nodes have a consistent value for their use_sim_time parameter. You can find an example of getting the current "ROS time" and converting it to an rmf_traffic::Time here.

It would be good for us to make a text-based schedule inspector that would make this occurrence more obvious, but that hasn't reached the top of our priority list yet.

[txlei]

setting use_sim_time true for my participant node did the trick.