Create/Extend A Pathway from an Existing One

Can you extend a pathway from an existing one? Take a look at my picture. I want to extend off one pathway for it to follow the purple line. Can I just extend a new pathway from the existing one?

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That made me think of another question. I’ve never tried this but can it exit a Pathway to get to an area? If I have two areas and a pathway that goes through area A to get to B. Will it use the pathway to go to A by exiting the pathway early?

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Try making an off ramp for it?

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Yeah you can’t. I just read you have to treat a pathway as a bridge or a tunnel. No on/in off/out. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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But does the written word match reality.

I thought I saw posts that say in the case of overlapped areas it may enter a path not necessarily from the end.

I may have dreamed that too though.

Oh snap. That would awesome if we already had it. I may try to make the pathway and see what happens.

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Again, I may have dreamed it.

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Worse that can happen is you dream it into reality.

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Oh please no…. You don’t want some of my dreams to be reality….

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I’ll ride that ride. I’m not even scared. :scream:

Pathways must start and end in an area. If you meet those constraints, they can intersect and overlap to be used.

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You mean like this?

Yes, both on and off.

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And I take serious issue with this because it’s supposed to be a safe channel between areas. I don’t need it deciding it’s ok to deviate from the channel. Yeah, it’s handy, but also dangerous if a user is expecting action A and it does B. Should at least be a toggle.

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Exactly like that. Now that I think about what Bryan said I think he makes valid points. I’m not sure I would want it to do that. Where and how does it decide to exit? :thinking: That could become a real problem in some situations.

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I’m not seeing it. It’s exiting within a defined area, not between.

In the 2nd example, when traversing from A to D, it will traverse from A to D by staying on the path from A to D.

If you have dispatched it to area C, and it leaves the A-D path to work on area C, area C is not “between areas”. C is where you sent it.

The hypothetical is that area C is a hazard? Why would you send the robot to work there? Is the scenario that Area C won’t be a hazard if you sent it via some other path? I’m having a difficult time inventing such a scenario that isn’t a movie plot.

Either C is safe to work, and the path doesn’t matter because it exits in a place it’s going to work anyway, or C is unsafe to work and it’s going to work that unsafe area regardless of how it enters the area. The assertion being made is that, somehow, an unsafe area will magically become safe if we enter it from one spot but not another, running two perimeter laps and a zigzag. Seriously.

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No, we currently don’t support drawing a pathway that extends from an existing one. A pathway must start and end within defined areas. If you extend it from an existing pathway, one end would not be connected to any area, so it wouldn’t be valid.

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Yes, seriously. I don’t think you’re taking all possibilities into consideration. This made me think of the tree swing engineering meme.

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I have a fence with a double gate. There is a brief gap in between the two areas this pathway connects. The pathway goes through the middle of the right gate. If Yarbo decides it wants to enter or exit from the side of this pathway too far up, it may collide with the side of the left gate. If it finished a plan and is right there where that pathway is, it could bend my gate up trying to get through to the pathway. Ask me how I know. The other hazard is that if the Yarbo is on the other side of the fence and the gate is closed, it randomly has used the pathway to conduct its smart turns bumping and pushing the gate and sending it into obstacle avoidance mode which was fun in the early days.

The other hazard is I have a pathway crossing my driveway connecting two different mowing areas. Yarbo decided to take a shorter pathway from the back yard one day when they removed the pathway constraints and let it enter and exit anywhere along it. This was a pathway I created for the snow blower that it had been ignoring. There was patio furniture and all kinds of stuff in the way. Of course, I was running gentle contact mode on the mower. It was scraping concrete with the blade guards and about to bump into things. Thankfully I was there and caught it in time. I ended up having to delete that pathway that went from the back yard through the patio and the closed other gate to the front driveway. With the pathway there, it determined that it could take that route and enter the crossover pathway in the middle of the driveway to get to the mowing area. What if there were vehicles in the driveway? It did this with no warning, just chose to do it one day. Had been ignoring it the whole time before. Thankfully, I was there watching it. To this day, I can place Yarbo on the driveway and start any plan I want and there is currently NO pathway that starts or ends from any area in that driveway and it will scamper down the driveway, enter midway and happily go wherever I told it to. That is unexpected and unintuitive. It needs to be a toggle in my mind with the default being the way it originally worked. That is strict adherence to staying in the pathway.

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Please make it per pathway.

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