LOAM Mapper for Autoware Labs

In Autoware Labs, LOAM Based Localization will be used. For this purpose, we need to create a tool for generating LOAM feature point cloud maps. This tool is created for that reason.

Used data for development

We are using the below data for development

Ground truth pose data which contains the post-processed precise time, position and orientation data.
PCAP file that contains LiDAR packets supported with PPS signal and GPRMC message.

You can find the data in the link below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ivVL4hYuqqzlTSMTbJV7gEvlbPvMJ7-M/view?usp=drive_link

The Program

The program has 2 stages. Basic mapping part and LOAM mapping part.

Basic Mapping Part

In basic mapping part, points are extracted from the PCAP files with precise time information. In that way, we can match all the LiDAR, point data with the corresponding ground truth position via time.

After matching, all the LiDAR points are transformed into the corresponding position with LiDAR-IMU calibrated matrix.

Corresponding Issue in Autoware: autowarefoundation/autoware.universe#6836

You should split the PCAP file given in the data folder in order to get rid of errors caused by RAM overfilling.
editcap -c 100000 ytu_map_2_08_04_23.pcap pcaps/ytu_campus.pcap

LOAM Mapping Part

This will be filled after LOAM mapping part is done.

Corresponding issues in Autoware:

Dependencies

The program is using below libraries:

rclcpp (for parameter setting and debugging)
PcapPlusPlus (please install from the source. cmake/FindPcapPlusPlus.cmake will help to find it)
[PCL] (https://pointclouds.org/)

Usage

Setting the Environment

This is a ROS2 package. So, the installation instructions are the same with all packages. We are using the below commands for using.

mkdir -p loam_mapping_ws/src
cd loam_mapping_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ataparlar/loam-mapper
cd ../
colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Running the LOAM Mapper

source loam_mapping_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch loam_mapper loam_mapper.launch.py

Parameters

Param	Description
pcap_dir_path	The folder path contains the PCAPs.
pose_txt_path	Path of the ground truth poses.
pcd_export_directory	Export directory for PCD files.
map_origin_x	X-coordinate of the origin of the map.
map_origin_y	Y-coordinate of the origin of the map.
map_origin_z	Z-coordinate of the origin of the map.
imu2lidar_roll	LiDAR-IMU calibration X angle.
imu2lidar_pitch	LiDAR-IMU calibration Y angle.
imu2lidar_yaw	LiDAR-IMU calibration Z angle.
enable_ned2enu	Decider parameter for enabling NED to ENU transform for LiDAR-IMU calibration values.
voxel_resolution	Voxel resolution param for downsampling. (lower means denser point cloud)
save_pcd	Decider parameter for saving point cloud as `pcd`.

congphase/loam-mapper