Abstract
Multi-beam lidar (MBL) rangefinders are becoming increasingly compact, light, and accessible 3D sensors, but they offer limited vertical resolution and field of view. The addition of a degree-of-freedom to build a rotating multi-beam lidar (RMBL) has the potential to become a common solution for affordable rapid full-3D high resolution scans. However, the overlapping of multiple-beams caused by rotation yields scanning patterns that are more complex than in rotating single beam lidar (RSBL). In this paper, we propose a simulation-based methodology to analyze 3D scanning patterns which is applied to investigate the scan measurement distribution produced by the RMBL configuration. With this purpose, novel contributions include: (i) the adaption of a recent spherical reformulation of Ripley’s K function to assess 3D sensor data distribution on a hollow sphere simulation; (ii) a comparison, both qualitative and quantitative, between scan patterns produced by an ideal RMBL based on a Velodyne VLP-16 (Puck) and those of other 3D scan alternatives (i.e., rotating 2D lidar and MBL); and (iii) a new RMBL implementation consisting of a portable tilting platform for VLP-16 scanners, which is presented as a case study for measurement distribution analysis as well as for the discussion of actual scans from representative environments. Results indicate that despite the particular sampling patterns given by a RMBL, its homogeneity even improves that of an equivalent RSBL.
Highlights
There is a growing interest in portable and affordable three-dimensional (3D) lidar systems for new applications that can benefit from accurate and speedy range measurements, such as progress tracking in construction sites [1], precision agriculture [2], medical imaging [3], intelligent surveillance [4], or textile tailoring [5]
With other 3D scan alternatives (i.e., rotating single-beam lidar (RSBL) and multi-beam lidar (MBL)); and (iii) a new rotating multi-beam lidar (RMBL) implementation consisting of a portable tilting platform for VLP-16 scanners, which is presented as a case study for measurement distribution analysis as well as for the discussion of actual scans from representative environments
Actual scans have been obtained by Velodyne’s VLP-16 and HDL-32 MBLs as well as for the Velomotion-16 RMBL with two different tilting speeds: the fastest scan speed given by the sensor (i.e., 56.25◦ /s) and a slow high resolution speed of 1.07◦ /s
Summary
There is a growing interest in portable and affordable three-dimensional (3D) lidar systems for new applications that can benefit from accurate and speedy range measurements, such as progress tracking in construction sites [1], precision agriculture [2], medical imaging [3], intelligent surveillance [4], or textile tailoring [5]. The most common approach to build compact 3D devices from low-cost sensors is tilting or spinning a 2D rangefinder by mounting it onto a one degree-of-freedom (DOF) rotation mechanism. Many examples of this type of customized rotating single-beam lidar (RSBL), mainly from the robotics community, can be found in the literature (e.g., [7,8,9,10]). In the last few years, automotive applications have fostered an active market for new compact and cost-effective multi-beam lidar (MBL) rangefinders, such as those developed by Velodyne (Morgan Hill, CA, USA) [11]. As opposed to single-beam 2D sensors, in multi-beam rangefinders the rotating mirror
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