[vtkusers] Adding a synthetic LiDAR scanner to VTK/Paraview

[David.Pont at scionresearch.com]

Hi David,
Our group is just starting to get into lidar scanning of forests so your
proposed contribution does sound very interesting to us. Just a few days
back we were discussing the idea of simulating a lidar scan of a detailed
polygonal model of a single tree. This idea is to understand from first
principles what lidar returns from such a complex target look like, and in
a controlled environment where we could play around with various parameters
and see what the effect on return data is. For that exercise we were
thinking of simulating just the direct 'first order' reflections. But
longer term we are very interested in full waveform lidar data. Would your
implementation allow simulation of this?
Having a lidar simulator in Paraview would make things very convenient for
us, but if there is no other support for this we may be keen to talk to you
about what you have implemented in C++.
Actually our first problem is to get / create detailed 3D polygonal models
of trees - right down to the individual leaves - gulp - this could keep us
busy for a while yet.

regards (or should that be "many happy returns"), Dave Pont


David Doria <daviddoria+vtk at gmail.com> wrote on 08/08/2009 06:48:44 a.m.:

> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 12:21 PM, David Doria <daviddoria+vtk at gmail.com
> > wrote:
> I have written a synthetic LiDAR scanner in c++ using VTK and VXL.
> That is, rather than setting up a collection of objects in real life
> and actually sending lasers into the scene, one can simply create a
> scene out of 3d models and "scan" it by casting rays at the models.
> This seems like something that could be a huge help to any
> researchers that work with 3D model/surface/point data and LiDAR
> data. I'm sure many researchers have their own implementations -
> after all it is a very straightforward process (simply a bunch of
> ray triangle intersections - which I have sped up using VTK's
> octree) but I think it would be very useful to someone starting out
> in the field and to attempt to unify some datasets. I've used it to
> produce data sets for which a ground truth is known in order to
> ensure algorithms are behaving properly before moving to "real"
> LiDAR scans. Also, noise can be added to the points to attempt to
> simulate a real LiDAR scan for researchers who do not have access to
> the very expensive equipment required to obtain real scans.
>
> The inputs are:
>
> Scanner position (3D coordinate)
> Min/Max phi angle (how far "up and down" the scanner should scan)
> Min/Max theta angle (how far "left and right" the scanner should scan)
> Scanner "forward" (the phi=0, theta=0 direction)
> Angular sample spacing or number of points to acquire in the theta
> and phi directions (so the "grid" is a total of (num_theta x num_phi)
points)
>
> The outputs are:
> A .ptx file that maintains implicitly the structure of the scan
> (points are ordered as they were taken in "strips"). This is the
> output given by a real Leica scanner.
> A .vtp file that is simply an unorganized point cloud of the scan
returns.
>
> It seems like this could be a neat little thing to add to paraview -
> just a couple of text boxes and sliders to set the parameters, load
> the scene you want to scan using existing paraview I/O, visualize
> the scan frustrum using paraview line sources, and then click
> "Scan!" to create your ptx and/or vtp.
>
> Can I get some feedback on if this is an acceptable extension to
> vtk/paraview capabilities?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
> I didn't get any responses from this - would anyone mind responding
> (negative responses are just as helpful as positive ones :) ) so I
> can put this to rest or move forward, which ever the community vote
> turns out :).
>
> Thanks,
>
> David_______________________________________________
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