Create and load a semantic map

Semantic maps are descriptions of an environment in terms of localized object instances and are stored in OWL files. There are different ways how to create such a file:

• The Semantic Map Editor is a graphical editor for semantic maps. It can be used to create object instances and to set their positions.
• If you already have a map datastructure and would like to create a semantic map from your program, you can use the SemanticMapToOWL ROS service. More information on this is given below.
• If you have integrated a perception system with KnowRob, a kind of semantic map is automatically created by the objects the robot perceives. You can save the in-memory map to an OWL file using the methods in the owl_export module
• In some cases, it may actually be the fastest to create the map manually in a good text editor in which you can copy and paste the object instances and their pose matrices. If you plan to do this, you should have well understood how object poses are represented in KnowRob.

If you have the information for the semantic map available in your program, the easiest way to get a valid OWL file is probably to use the SemanticMapToOWL ROS service described here: http://ias.in.tum.de/kb/wiki/index.php/Mod_semantic_map#SemanticMapToOWL If you do not want to use the service, you can still have a look at how the OWL is generated using the OWLAPI, but since the internal object representation is quite a complex thing, I'd recommend to start with that service.

The object types in the semantic map message need to correspond to the object classes in KnowRob. If the identifiers do not match, you need to create a mapping at some point; if you use the conversion service, the easiest place would be to have the mapping in your code for now. You can get a list of all object classes in KnowRob using the following command:

rosrun mod_semantic_map SemanticMapToOWL list