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:
Additionaly the input data can be throttled to reduce the cpu load.
rosrun pcdfilter_pa pcdfilter_pa_node roslaunch pcdfilter_pa pcdfilter_pa.launch
Input and Output Topics:
| Topic Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| "~/in_cloud" | sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 | Input as new pointcloud type. |
| "~/in_cloud_old" | sensor_msgs/PointCloud | Input as old pointloud type. Will be converted to new pointcloud type. |
| "~/in_laser" | sensor_msgs/LaserScan | Input as single laser scan. Will be converted to new pointcloud type by package "laser_geometry". |
| "~/out_cloud" | sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 | Output of filtering node. |
All topics can be remapped using parameters (see below).
Services:
| Service Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| "~/filter" | pcdfilter_pa/PcdFilterPaCloud | Forced filtering via service call. No throttling is done and input/output cloud is part of service message. |
| "~/add_filters" | pcdfilter_pa/PcdFilterPaFilter | Adding new filters. Old filters are kept. |
| "~/change_filters" | pcdfilter_pa/PcdFilterPaFilter | Adding new filters, but removing all old filters before adding. |
| "~/enable" | std_srvs/Empty | Disables this node. This also disconnects the node from all input messages. |
| "~/disable" | std_srvs/Empty | Enables this node. |
Parameters:
| 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.
Definition: This is the definition of every single filter as a string.
[<inversion>]<type> <separator> <dimensions> <tf> [<tf_offset>] [<tf2> [<tf2_offset>]] [# <comment>]
| 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 | Description | Nr Parameters | Nr TF ids |
|---|---|---|---|
| "cube" | specified by its sidelength | 1 parameter | 1 TF |
| "sphere" | specified by its radius | 1 parameter | 1 TF |
| "block" | cuboid specified by its three sidelengths in x,y and z direction | 3 parameters | 1 TF |
| "cylinder" | specified by its radius and its height | 2 parameters | 1 TF |
| "link" | cylinder centered around the two given tfs; specified by its radius and its overshoot | 2 parameters | 2 TF |
| "cone" | cone headed at fist tf and pointing to second tf; specified by its height and its ratio (radius/height) | 2 parameters | 2 TF |
| Seperator | Description |
|---|---|
| ":" | current filter is required; if some tf is missing the whole filtering is aborted and no output pointcloud is generated |
| "?" | current filter may be skipped; if some tf is missing then the current filter is not applied; but in any case the whole filtering and output process is continued |
x y z qx qy qz qwMissing parameters will be set to "0". If qw is not set then it will be set to sqrt(1 - qx^2 - qy^2 - qz^2)
Examples:
cube: 3 base_footprint
Filters every point within the following cube - the cube is removed from the pointcloud.
The sidelength is 3 [meters].
The center is aligned with TF frame "base_footprint".
Corners will be at [+/-1.5 , +/- 1.5, +/- 1.5].
!sphere: 2.3 map
Only points within sphere will stay.
The center of sphere is aligned with TF frame "map".
The radius is 2.3 [meters] and the diameter is 4.6 [meters].
block: 1 2 3 base_link 0.5 1 1.5
Removes every point within the cuboid.
One corner of the cuboid is at center of TF frame "base_link". This is due to the additional offset of [0.5, 1 1.5].
Two opposite corners are at [0, 0, 0] and [1, 2, 3].
link: 0.2 0 arm_link1 arm_link2
Removes every point within the cylinder, which is attached to both TF frames.
The center of the top and bottom surface is exactly at origin of one frame (zero overshoot).
The radius is 0.2 [meters].
The height depends only the relative position of the two frames.
Also the orientation of the cylinder is not fixed to any frame.
!cone: 10 1 laser pan_tilt_tilt_link
Removes every point outside the cone.
The top of cone will be at the origin of the TF frame "laser" and the centerline will go straight through the origin of the TF frame "pan_tilt_tilt_link".
The height is 10 [meters].
The angle at the top is 90 degrees (ratio of radius to height is 1:1).
Source code at github:
Related packages:
ROS packages:
| ROS-Distribution | Documentation |
|---|---|
| Indigo | docs.ros.org |
| Jade (EOL May 2017) | docs.ros.org |
| Kinetic | docs.ros.org |
| Lunar | docs.ros.org |