World Model¶
The global world model maintains a persistent 3D representation of everywhere the robot has sensed — the memory the global planner plans over. AirStack's shipped default is VDB Mapping: an OpenVDB-based voxel map, built in the map frame from the filtered LiDAR cloud, vendored in-tree with the config owned by global_bringup.
Packages¶
- VDB Mapping ROS 2 (
vdb_mapping_ros2, in-tree) — ROS 2 wrapper around the FZI VDB Mapping library; upstream wrapper repo: vdb_mapping_ros2
Launch¶
The mapper is composed by the selected stack's entry launch file (stacks/<name>/launch/*.launch.xml), which includes vdb_mapping_ros2.py with global_bringup/config/vdb_params.yaml — see stacks/full_default/launch/stack.launch.xml.
Key Interchanges¶
All map topics are specified in global_map (§3): vdb_map_visualization (today's de facto map interchange, consumed by the reference global planner), the vdb_map_updates / _sections / _overwrites grids for remote/split map synchronization, and the vdb_map_pointcloud export. The map lives in the map frame.
In the lite_offload_global split stack, VDB mapping runs offboard on the ground host: the filtered sensor cloud crosses the bridge (per the stack's bridge.yaml) and the map is built where the global planner consumes it.