Occupancy grids, point clouds and meshes.. oh my!
These open-source tools could save robotics engineers from costly re-scanning missions.
Deep Dive
A developer has released three new open-source tools for the Robot Operating System (ROS) ecosystem. The first converts point clouds to occupancy grids, useful for revisiting scanned locations like buildings. The second generates occupancy grids directly from ROS bag files. The third and most advanced tool creates both point clouds and 3D meshes from bag files, designed to salvage data when robot odometry fails during a scan, potentially eliminating the need for a second, costly data collection run.
Why It Matters
This simplifies 3D mapping workflows and can save significant time and resources in robotics and surveying projects by recovering data from failed scans.