rmf_reservation_node package

The goal of this package is to provide a simple parking reservation node in RMF. Before a robot goes to its next destination the fleet adapter asks the reservation-node if its next destination is available. If the destination is available the robot will immediately proceed to the next destination, otherwise it will allocate a free parking spot for the robot to wait at till the next destination becomes available in a FIFO manner. If you need more advanced methods than FIFO, feel free to hack this package. To enable the use of this package you need to add the following to your fleet configuration yaml at the fleet level and run the reservation node:

  use_parking_reservations: True

We recommend disabling responsive_wait when you do so. An example is available in rmf_demos.

Expected Behaviour

Basic queueing

You should never need to interact with this package directly. Rather, you can simply dispatch a task using the traditional methods. If you have rmf_demos installed you can run the office world. We can start by commanding the tinyRobot2 to go to the pantry.

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -p pantry -F tinyRobot -R tinyRobot2 --use_sim_time

The robot should proceed as expected. We can then ask tinyRobot1 to also go to the pantry. Nothing should happen as the pantry is already occupied and tinyRobot1 is at its parking spot.

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -p pantry  -F tinyRobot -R tinyRobot1 --use_sim_time

We can ask tinyRobot2 to move to the lounge after this.

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -p lounge -F tinyRobot -R tinyRobot2 --use_sim_time

This should immediately trigger 2 things:

1. tinyRobot2 will move to the lounge
2. tinyRobot1 will proceed to move to the pantry taking tinyRobot2’s place.

Moving to a waitpoint

If we continue from the previous example. Lets ask tinyRobot1 and tinyRobot2 to swap places starting at the pantry and lounge respectively.

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -p pantry -F tinyRobot -R tinyRobot1 --use_sim_time

You should see tinyRobot1 move totinyRobot2_charger as lounge is not a designated wait point. You can then command tinyRobot2 to the lounge.

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -p lounge -F tinyRobot -R tinyRobot2 --use_sim_time

tinyRobot1 and tinyRobot2 should now proceed to swap places.

If there are at least as many parking spots as robots on any given floor, then you should never have a deadlock.

Protocol Used Behind the Scenes

The reservation node has no information about the state of the graph, it simply maintains a list of available parking spots internally. The fleet adapter does most of the heavy lifting in the GoToPlace event. When a GoToPlace event is started we first check if the robot is already at one of the target locations. The fleet adapter submits a ReservationRequest message with the desired end parameters. The parameters are listed in terms of cost (where the cost function is distance). The reservation node will issue a ticket for said request. When ready to proceed, send a claim message with the ticket and list of potential waiting points ordered by distance. The reservation node will then try to award the lowest cost target location. If the destination is not available yet then it will award the lowest cost waiting point to the robot. The fleet adapter will release the previous location as it starts to move to its next location.

Known Issues

1. At start up if there is no idle task, the reservation node will not know where the robots are. It is advised to send 1 GoToPlace task for every robot that is added to the world.

Quality Declaration

This package claims to be in the Quality Level 4 category. See the Quality Declaration for more details._