Mapping with Ouster Sensors

Owned by Danielle Wheeler
Last updated: Nov 18, 2024
2 min read

Maps can be made with one pointcloud or multiple

Mapping with one PointCloud/Ouster SLAM

Introduction

https://ouster.com/insights/blog/introduction-to-slam-simultaneous-localization-and-mapping

Getting Started

https://static.ouster.dev/sdk-docs/python/slam-api-example.html

Multiple Point Clouds

There are different applications that can combine multiple point clouds into a map.

Ouster’s Gemini & Blue City can make a live map from multiple live sensors.

Cloud Compare offers tools to merge multiple point clouds:

  1. Convert the capture to PCD/PLY format

    1. https://static.ouster.dev/sdk-docs/python/examples/conversion.html#pcaps-to-ply

    2. PLY unit is in meters

  2. Import it into CloudCompare

  3. Roughly align the point clouds to each other:

    1. align cloud tools image-20241031-193807.png

    2. translate/rotate command (under Edit)

      1. You can use this to limit the movement of the point cloud

      2. image-20241031-195632.png

  4. Use the cloud registration tool for finer alignment image-20241031-194947.png

    1. When this is finished, a dialog should appear with a 4x4 matrix representing the transformation

      image-20241115-200436.png

      The screenshot above formats the matrix oddly. This is the corrected formatting:

      0.999 0.002 0.052 -0.257 -0.001 1.000 -0.012 -0.072 -0.052 0.012 0.999 0.912 0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000

Demo Video

 

 

Cleaning Artifacts in Maps

There may be unwanted points in the map. Cloud Compare has a SOR tool to remove noise.

Comparing 2 PointClouds

CloudCompare offers tools to look for changes in PointCloud. Users may be interested in a change in the environment.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r-slOOgKhw

Other customers have used MeshLab to accomplish this (they had to downsample so their computer wouldn’t crash)