Cartographer is Google’s solution to robot localization mappnig problem. It is built on ROS therefore you can run it on your robot as well.
Using the lidar and odometry data, cartographer generates a map as the robot is moved. This map can be saved and used for navigation later on.
To launch cartographer on your computer:
ros2 launch rosrider_cartographer cartographer.launch.py use_sim_time:=False launch_rviz:=True
If cartographer is running on the robot, set launch_rviz to False, if running on a desktop setting it to True will launch RVIZ visualization program. If used with a simulator, set use_sim_time to True.
For running cartographer in a simulation environment see
Next Section: Navigation