GPS, RTK, and Outdoor Navigation in ROS 2

Source: slgrobotics robots_bringup

Why This Matters

Outdoor robots do not get indoor navigation for free with a GPS plugged in. Once you depend on GNSS, you inherit satellite visibility, correction quality, antenna placement, frame discipline, and network availability as part of your navigation system.

Distilled Takeaways

• Outdoor navigation is usually a fusion problem, not a single-sensor problem.
• GPS is most useful when fused with wheel odometry and IMU data through a coherent localization architecture.
• RTK can materially improve outdoor positioning, but it adds operational dependencies such as correction delivery, base-station configuration, and network resilience.
• Sensor placement and frame conventions still matter outdoors; a badly mounted antenna or IMU can look like software instability.
• Outdoor bringup should include explicit checks for Wi-Fi, VPN, correction sources, and power behavior, not just Nav2 parameters.

Practical Value

• Use GNSS as part of a state-estimation pipeline, not as a replacement for odometry or IMU reasoning.
• Separate the questions of absolute global pose, local motion quality, and controller behavior when debugging field performance.
• Expect outdoor success to depend on operations discipline as much as package selection.
• Use this page as the bridge between indoor Nav2 experience and field robotics with real position infrastructure.

Corroborating References

• Nav2 GPS navigation tutorial
• robot_localization integrating GPS
• robot_localization package docs

When to Read the Original Source

Go to the original repository when you want a practical example of how one robot stack combines Jazzy bringup, sensor documentation, Raspberry Pi deployment, and outdoor GPS-oriented operation in a single working project.