ROS Map Editor

Maps built with SLAM are rarely perfect. People walk through the scan and leave ghost obstacles, glass doors leave gaps in walls, and LiDAR noise speckles open floor. Before a robot can navigate reliably, someone has to clean the map up. The ROS Map Editor does that in the browser, without image editors or scripts.

What you can do

• Open a ROS occupancy grid: the .pgm image and its .yaml metadata.
• Paint pixels as free, occupied or unknown with an exact brush that never writes in-between grey values.
• Draw solid keep-out rectangles over stairs, drop-offs and other no-go areas.
• Check and edit the resolution, origin, thresholds and negate flag, then export both files again.

Why exact pixel values matter

A ROS map has three meaningful pixel values. Ordinary image editors smooth brush edges, and those grey edge pixels are read by the map server as unknown or even occupied cells, leaving a ring of speckles around every stroke. The editor writes only the exact values 0, 205 and 254, so a cleaned area stays clean.

Privacy

Maps of homes, offices and factories can be sensitive. The editor reads and writes files locally in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Open the ROS Map Editor. The guides below explain the map file format, a cleaning workflow, Nav2 keep-out zones, mapping with slam_toolbox and choosing a resolution.