Track the status of intermediate waypoints in ROS navigation

[Aditya Bidwai]

Hi guys!

1. So a plan is composed of start_point, intermediate_points and goal_point
   
2. When I call move_base with a goal_point, it asks global_planner for a plan and starts navigating to the intermediate points and eventually to the goal_point
   

If my statements 1) and 2) are correct, then,

3) Is there any service which can help me track the status of navigation to these "intermediate points"? As far as i know the current_goal topic has the goal_point published on it and the status topic has the status to the "goal_point" published on it, but there's no API which can help to know the status of navigation to the intermediate points.

Any idea how do I deal with this? Thanks 😃

[Michael Ferguson]

The intermediate points aren't really tracked in any real sense even inside navigation - most local planners just "forget" the intermediate poses that are behind them.

The best way you could do this is to write a node that subscribes the global plan, and then monitor your current position versus this (there are some utilities inside the base_local_planner package that might help with some of this, but I think all of them assume you want to forget the older points, not figure out how far along the path you are).