Announcement on the recent map specification changes

[kminoda]

Hello Autoware Community,

I would like to announce some map specification changes that have been made recently.

Specification for dynamic map loading

Dynamic map loading feature for pointcloud map enables Autoware to operate without the limitation due to the size of pointcloud map. When splitting the pointcloud map, not only you have to follow some specifications e.g. the map size, but also you need to provide pointcloud_map_metadata.yaml so that Autoware may recognize some metadata for each divided pointcloud map file.

Please refer to the How-to guides in Autoware Documentation for using divided map. You may also find the specification details in the README of map_loader.

Specification for using arbitrary projection type

Autoware supports multiple projection types, e.g. MGRS, UTM, and Transverse Mercator, but the configuration for this was scattered around multiple modules among Autoware Universe. In order to have a unified form, a new configuration file called map_projector_info.yaml has been recently introduced. For further information, please refer to the README of map_projection_loader.

Sample directory structure

Sample directory structure is as follows:

sample-map-rosbag
├── lanelet2_map.osm
├── pointcloud_map
│ ├── A.pcd
│ ├── B.pcd
│ ├── C.pcd
│ └── ...
├── map_projector_info.yaml
└── pointcloud_map_metadata.yaml

You can download a compatible sample map from this link.