/point_cloud_utilities

A ROS package with useful tools for simple operations on point clouds.

Primary LanguageC++BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" LicenseBSD-3-Clause

Point Cloud Utilities

A package with utilities for Point Clouds. Contains:

  1. a ROS node to downsample a generic resolution point cloud (sensor_msgs::PointCloud2) taken from a specified topic (e.g. /kinect2/sd/points) to a any lower resolution (x_res * y_res) keeping the PointCloud2 organized (THIS IS IMPORTANT ECTO (in SOMA) TO WORK - PCL DOES NOT HAVE ANY ORGANIZED DOWNSAMPLING FILTER). The node publishes the resulting cloud (sensor_msgs::PointCloud2) to another specified topic.
  2. a ROS node to save the point cloud as PCD. A point cloud (sensor_msgs::PointCloud2) taken from a specified topic (e.g. /kinect2/sd/points) is saved to a PCD file.
  3. a ROS node to crop the point cloud centrally to a any lower resolution (x_res * y_res) keeping the PointCloud2 organized. The node publishes the resulting cloud (sensor_msgs::PointCloud2) to another specified topic.

Authors

Getting Started

Prerequisites

The only dependencies are ROS Indigo or newer and PCL.

Installing

To install this package just clone and catkin build.

Running the downsampler

For UNIPI setup (Kinect One)

Launch the pc_downsampler node (this downsamples the point cloud taken from /kinect2/sd/points to the resolution specified as param in the launch and publishes to /down_sampled_points).

roslaunch point_cloud_utilities pc_downsampler_kinect2.launch

For other setups

Run the following commands on separate terminals:

roscore

rosparam set x_res (desired_x_resolution) && rosparam set y_res (desired_y_resolution)

rosrun point_cloud_utilities pc_downsampler input_topic:=/your_input_topic output_topic:=/your_output_topic

Or please create a new launch file.

To set different output resolution

Modify the following lines in src/main.cpp :

int x_res = 320;
int y_res = 240;

This might be modified in a following version.

Running the PCD saver

For UNIPI setup (Kinect One)

Launch the pc_to_pcd node (this saves the point cloud taken from /kinect2/sd/points to a test_pcd.pcd file ~/.ros).

roslaunch point_cloud_utilities pc_to_pcd_kinect2.launch

Running the cropper

For UNIPI setup (Kinect One)

Launch the pc_cropper node (this crops the point cloud taken from /kinect2/sd/points to the dimensions specified as param in the launch (x_res, y_res) and publishes to /cropped_points).

roslaunch point_cloud_utilities pc_cropper_kinect2.launch

Running the PCD transformer

Launch the pcd_transform node (this starts a service called /pcd_transform_service)).

roscore

rosrun point_cloud_utilities point_cloud_utilities_transfrom

Then call the service on a seperate terminal specifying the path to the .pcd file and the transformation:

rosservice call /pcd_transform_service "pcd_path: './file.pcd'
transform:
  position:
    x: 0.0
    y: 0.0
    z: 0.0
  orientation:
    x: 0.0
    y: 0.0
    z: 0.0
    w: 1.0"

Other launch files

Other useful launch files are also provided to combine dowsampling, cropping and saving.