Unavailable param file prevents individual preprocessor nodes from starting

[mbharatheesha]

Checklist

• I've read the contribution guidelines.
• I've searched other issues and no duplicate issues were found.
• I'm convinced that this is not my fault but a bug.

Description

I have setup the use of crop_box_filter node from autoware_pointcloud_preprocessor package using the individual filter launch file as follows:

<include file="$(find-pkg-share autoware_pointcloud_preprocessor)/launch/crop_box_filter_node.launch.xml" >
    <arg name="input_topic_name" value="pointcloud" />
    <arg name="output_topic_name" value="cropbox/filtered" />
    <arg name="cropbox_filter_param_file" value="$(find-pkg-share my_pkg)/param/crop_box_filter.yaml" />
</include>

Expected behavior

The topic cropbox/filtered contains cropbox filtered points and I can use it further down the perception stack to do clustering and object detection.

Actual behavior

The launch file setup above, doesn't start the filter node properly and I see the following warning on launch:

[WARNING] [launch_ros.actions.node]: Parameter file path is not a file: /opt/ros/jazzy/share/autoware_pointcloud_preprocessor/config/filter.param.yaml

And the topic cropbox/filtered is empty. Since I feed this topic to an instance of the euclidean clustering node, this is confirmed by the following message by the euclidean clustering node:

[component_container-6] [WARN] [1732860045.511208848] [euclidean_cluster]: Empty sensor points!

Steps to reproduce

• Use the launch file as in the description
• ros2 launch <path_to_launch_file>

Versions

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• ROS2: Jazzy
• Autoware: main

Possible causes

The crop_box_filter_node.launch.xml sets a parameter filter_param_file here. However, that file doesn't exist in the config directory and in the code, I only see parameters from crop_box_filter_node.param.yaml being consumed.

The filter node does work correctly when the filter_param_file is initialized to point to any file that exists in the config folder. For example, if the above launch file is changed as follows:

<include file="$(find-pkg-share autoware_pointcloud_preprocessor)/launch/crop_box_filter_node.launch.xml" >
    <arg name="input_topic_name" value="pointcloud" />
    <arg name="output_topic_name" value="cropbox/filtered" />
    <arg name="cropbox_filter_param_file" value="$(find-pkg-share my_pkg)/config/crop_box_filter.yaml" />
    <arg name="filter_param_file" value="$(find-pkg-share autoware_pointcloud_preprocessor)/config/crop_box_filter_node.param.yaml" />
</include>

However, I think the argument filter_param_file should just be removed as that seems to be redundant.

Additional context

No response

[vividf]

Thanks for your contribution, the issue is solved by #9525