ProAut Pointcloud Filter

Introduction

This package was designed to remove simple geometric shapes from pointclouds. E.g. A cube or a sphere. Several of these filters can be applied to a pointcloud in one shot. For more details on the types of filters and their parameters see Filters.

This package includes a full node and a ros interface for one’s own node. For more details about the node, like topic names and parameters, see Node.

The package can handle three different input types of pointclouds:

• sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 (this is also the output type)
• sensor_msgs/PointCloud
• sensor_msgs/LaserScan

Additionaly the input data can be throttled to reduce the cpu load.

Node

rosrun pcdfilter_pa pcdfilter_pa_node
roslaunch pcdfilter_pa pcdfilter_pa.launch

Input and Output Topics

All topics can be remapped using parameters (see below).

Services

Parameters

Filter

Parameter Name | Type | Description ———————–|——————-|————————————- “~/filters” | vector of strings | All pointcloud filters as an array of strings.

general settings

Parameter Name | Type | Description ———————–|——————-|————————————- “~/skip_count” | integer | Input throttling. Number of skipped messages after each processed message. “~/skip_time” | double | Input throttling. Time intervall in seconds. After each processed message, this intervall starts and all input messages will be skipped. “~/tf_lookup_time” | double | Maximum time in seconds for waiting for a specific TF transform. “~/buffer_pointcloud” | bool | Flag for buffering the last received pointcloud. This can be used to test different filters without resending the some pointcloud. “~/debugging” | bool | Flag for enabling extented output. “~/enabled” | bool | Flag for setting start up behaviour. Indicates if node is filtering at startup, or not.

laser

Parameter Name | Type | Description ———————–|——————-|————————————- “~/laser_nan_replacement_value” | double | If a nan-value is represented within the laser scan, it might indicate “no obstacle within range”. Therefore this parameters will replace those values with a fixed number.

topics and services

Parameter Name | Type | Description ———————–|——————-|————————————- “~/topic_in_cloud” | string | Name of input topic for new pointclouds. “~/topic_in_cloud_old” | string | Name of input topic for old pointclouds. “~/topic_in_laser” | string | Name of input topic for laser scans. “~/topic_out_cloud” | string | Name of output topic for filtered pointcloud.

See also this config file. It contains all parameters and their default value.

Filter

Definition

This is the definition of every single filter as a string.

[<inversion>]<type> <separator> <dimensions> <tf> [<tf_offset>] [<tf2> [<tf2_offset>]] [# <comment>]

inversion (optional)

Inversion | Description ———-|————————————————————– “” (none) | normal behaviour; points within the volume will be filtered out; all points outside will be kept “!” | reversed behaviour; points within the volume will be kept; all points outside will be filtered out

type

Type | Description | Nr Parameters | Nr TF ids

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Changelog for package pcdfilter_pa

1.2.0 (2018-01-04)

• bugfixed g++-warning (missing whitespace after the macro name)

• updated parameters (*.yaml and ...node_parameter.cpp)

• updated documentation

• • changed api to new version of parameter_pa
  • added support for visual studio code
• Contributors: Peter Weissig

1.1.0 (2017-08-03)

• bugfix (added laser_geometry)
• moved header from include/ to include/${project_name} also fixed related paths
• updated CMakeLists.txt (added install)
• updated license to 2017
• updated README.md Added general explanation and description from doxygen.h to readme.md
• added mainpage to doxygen documentation also removed filter description from service definition
• updated package.xml to format version 2
• minor changes to CMakeLists.txt
• updated git policies
• initial commit
• Contributors: Peter Weissig