point-cloud-read

Acquire point clouds of specific objects in the scene in order to save or stream them.

Dependencies

• Yarp
• iCub
• IOL

Optional

• PCL

Installation

git clone https://github.com/fbottarel/point-cloud-read.git
cd point-cloud-read
mkdir build && cd build
cmake [-DUSE_PCL=ON] ../
make install

Usage

The user might want to use this module when they want to acquire point clouds of objects currently in the scene in front of the robot.  point-cloud-read takes care of interfacing with the modules in IOL to determine whether the queried object is in the scene, where it is, and retrieve the point cloud from the robot's stereo vision system.

Once the module is running and connected (the code is comprehensive of a .xml application file for yarpmanager) it can be interacted with using the ports it opens:

• /pointCloudRead/rpc exposes an rpc interface to trigger acquisitions. See below for details
• /pointCloudRead/pointCloud:o is a yarp::os::BufferedPort where the module publishes the acquired point clouds as <yarp::sig::PointCloud<yarp::sig::DataXYZRGBA>>

Typing help as rpc command returns a list of available commands, here briefly listed.

• set_period periodInSeconds sets the streaming period to periodInSeconds seconds. Default periodInSeconds is 1.0
• stream_start objectName starts the point cloud stream of an object recognized as objectName in the scene with period periodInSeconds. Empty point clouds are streamed if no objectName is found in the scene
• stream_stop stops the point cloud stream
• stream_one objectName triggers a one-shot acquisition and streaming. If no objectName is found in the scene, the command fails
• dump_one objectName format commands the module to acquire a point cloud and dump it to a file in the .off or .pcd format. The resulting file will be objectName_point_cloud_XXX.[off|pcd], where XXX is a zero-filled number that increases when more point clouds of the same object are dumped. Such file is easily readable with programs such as MeshLab. Note: the .pcd format is available only if the support to PCL is enabled.
• get_point_cloud objectName returns a yarp::os::Bottle containing the point cloud of the required object as a yarp::sig::PointCloud<yarp::sig::DataXYZRGBA>.