FALKOLib - Fast Adaptive Laser Keypoint Orientation-invariant

Copyright (C) 2016 Fabjan Kallasi and Dario Lodi Rizzini.

OVERVIEW

FALKOLib is a library that implements two keypoint detectors and two descriptors designed for 2D LIDARs. The two detectors are:

FALKO (Fast Adaptive Laser Keypoint Orientation-invariant), a general purpose keypoint detector which gives the name to the whole library;
OC (Orthogonal Corner), a keypoint specific for enviroments with straight linear walls and architectural elements arranged along orthogonal directions. The two descriptors are:
BSC (Binary Shape Context), a binary version of standard shape context descriptor;
CGH (Cumulative Gaussian Histogram), which represents the neighborhood of a point with an histogram.

Moreover, the library provides the implementation of methods for keypoint/feature data association. In particular, the following methods have been implemented:

NN (Nearest Neighbor): each keypoint/feature of one set are associated to the nearest keypoint/features of another set;
CCDA (Combined Constraint Data Association): features are associated by finding the maximal sets of corresponding feature pairs, which are compatible with constraints to a set;
AHT (Affine Hough Transform): the corresponding features are found by voting the affine/rigid transformation that overlaps them according to Hough technique.

If you use this library, please cite the following paper:

F. Kallasi, D. Lodi Rizzini, and S. Caselli. Fast Keypoint Features from Laser Scanner for Robot Localization and Mapping. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 1(1):176-183, jan 2016. DOI 10.1109/LRA.2016.2517210

or the most relevant associated publications by visiting: http://rimlab.ce.unipr.it/FALKOLib.html

DEPENDENCIES

The software depends on the following external libraries

Boost >= 1.36 (submodule lexical_cast)
Eigen 3.0

The library also requires the third party library mcqd developed by Janez Konc (see http://www.sicmm.org/konc/), which has been included in folder EXTERNAL.

HOW TO COMPILE

Let ${falkolib_ROOT} be the install directory of your local copy of library falkolib. The following standard commands are required to compile it:

cd ${falkolib_ROOT}
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

You can also install the library into a system directory. To change the install directory you must set cmake environment variable ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX} (e.g. using command "ccmake .." before calling "cmake .."). Its default value on UNIX-like/Linux systems is "/usr/local". After compiling library falkolib, run the command:

sudo make install

The command "sudo" is required only if ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX} is a system diretory managed by administrator user root. Such command copies:

header files of ${falkolib_ROOT}/include/falkolib to ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/include/falkolib/
library files ${falkolib_ROOT}/lib/libfalkolib.a to ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/lib/
cmake script ${falkolib_ROOT}/cmake_modules/falkolibConfig.cmake to ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/share/falkolib/

HOW TO USE LIBRARY falkolib IN YOUR PROJECT

If library falkolib has been installed in system directory "/usr/local", then it is straighforward to use it in your projects. You needs to add the following lines to your project as in this example:

CMAKE_MINIMUM_REQUIRED(VERSION 2.8)
PROJECT(foobar)

find_package(falkolib REQUIRED)
message(STATUS "falkolib_FOUND ${falkolib_FOUND}")
message(STATUS "falkolib_INCLUDE_DIRS ${falkolib_INCLUDE_DIRS}")
message(STATUS "falkolib_LIBRARY_DIRS ${falkolib_LIBRARY_DIRS}")
message(STATUS "falkolib_LIBRARIES ${falkolib_LIBRARIES}")

if(${falkolib_FOUND})
include_directories(${falkolib_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${falkolib_LIBRARY_DIRS})
endif()

add_executable(foobar foobar.cpp)
target_link_libraries(foobar ${falkolib_LIBRARIES})

The above example uses the variables defined in falkolibConfig.cmake: