News Articles

The joint Open Perception-Ocular Robotics code sprint is ready to start! The sprint will cover an efficient pcl::Grabber driver interface for the RE0x laser sensors, as well as various enhancements to our PCL visualization libraries to be able to handle both larger datasets as well as process data packets coming from these sensors faster. The developer working on the sprint is Pat Marion from Kitware. Pat is already a seasoned PCL coder and has contributed significantly to the iOS and Android port of PCL (see this for more information) and the PCL plugin for ParaView.

We would like to thank all the other candidates for their excellent proposals! We already started following up with each of them individually, as there are many more sprints to come!

[Note:…

PCL-VLCS is ready to start! The sprint will cover a Plug-n-Play interface for the Velodyne HDL series to make these sensors much easier to use and the high-density point clouds easily accessible by developers. The developers working on the sprint are Keven Ring from MITRE and Kuk Cho from Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

We would like to thank all the other candidates for their excellent proposals! We already started following up with each of them individually, as there are many more sprints to come!

[Note: the new blogging page for VLCS will be up within the next few days at http://pointclouds.org/blog/vlcs/.]

Project Description & Motivation: Velodyne's HDL-32 LiDAR sensor features a 360° unmatched vertical field of view with a range of 100 meters and typical accuracy of ±2 cm. Rotating at 10 Hz, this sensor produces upwards of 700,000 points per second over an Ethernet connection in UDP packets from 32 individual lasers and sources. GPS information is also be included and used for clock synchronization. Capturing and converting these packets into usable points is something that, until now, customers in academia and industry, have done themselves with code integrated from their own research projects. Velodyne wishes to significantly expand the reach and audience for the HDL sensor products by making the these sensors Plug-n-Play -- attach the sensor to a system, load the drivers, and capture point clouds in PCL formats within minutes - thereby leveraging the significant and growing availability of PCL viewers.

The most apt description of this sprint is that we want to make the HDL series into the "Kinect- equivalent" for LiDAR systems -- a Plug-n-Play interface will make these sensors much easier to use and the high-density point clouds easily accessible by developers. The advantages…

It is our immense pleasure to announce the beginning of a new PCL Code Sprint sponsored by Ocular Robotics: PCL-ORCS!

Ocular Robotics is looking for talented contributors that are willing to develop an efficient pcl::Grabber driver interface for the RE0x laser sensors.

PCL-ORCS will run for 3 months during this fall. Potential candidates should submit the following information to jobs@pointclouds.org:

• a brief resume
• a list of existing PCL contributions (if any)
• a list of projects (emphasis on open source projects please) that they contributed to in the past

This project requires good C++ programming skills, knowledge of PCL internals and a basic understanding of laser sensors and 3D visualization.

We are happy to announce that the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM) and Open Perception (OP) are partnering for the purpose of Point Cloud Library (PCL) development.

Fraunhofer IPM develops tailor-made measuring techniques, systems and materials for industry. The Railway Measurement Group within IPM is developing advanced optical measuring systems for monitoring the condition of rail and road infrastructure. The group has been specialized on laser-based sensor systems, e.g. high speed laser scanner unit.

To capture the environment of a railway track, trains which are equipped with laser scanners are used. A new conceptual design developed by IPM extends the common setup by scanners which are capturing data ahead in driving direction. IPM selected the Point Cloud Library (PCL) project as their algorithmic core for optimizing the operating process and their software infrastructure.

For this task we are looking for two master students. Please see the images/PDFs below for more detailed information.

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After just a couple of weeks from the official launch, we are happy to announce that the Open Perception organization is sponsoring its first ever PCL Code Sprint. And because we are seriously standing by our commitment to make PCL truly cross-platform, this code sprint is very different than what we're used to: Fix PCL on Mac! What this means is that the lucky participant(s), besides fame and glory, will be receiving financial support through our already established code sprint pipeline, for working on improving the usability of PCL on OS X, and tackling several important issues, such as:

• clean builds on OS X 10.6+, using different compilers: XCode 4.3+, GCC 4.2+, Clang
• different methodologies for installing our dependencies (Boost, VTK, etc): source compiles vs prebuilt binaries (e.g., DMGs)
• Cocoa vs X11 for QVTK (Qt+VTK)
• analysis and scripts for MacPorts, Homebrew, Fink, CMake/SuperBuild
• installation locations: /opt/local, /usr/local, user defined
• offer support for Mac builds on our build farm, managed with TeamCity and CDash

It is our immense pleasure to announce the beginning of a new PCL Code Sprint sponsored by DINAST: PCL-DINCS!

DINAST, a short range 3D sensor manufacturer known for their IPA infrared cameras, is looking for talented developers that are willing to contribute to two areas in PCL:

1. a pcl::Grabber camera driver interface for DINAST cameras (standalone BSD open source C++ driver code already available);
2. a technology demonstrator for real-time 3D collision mapping (e.g., using octree structures) used for motion planning with a mobile manipulator, using multiple IPA 3D cameras.

PCL-DINCS will run for 1.5 months during this summer. The student developer will receive a stipend of $1500 and several IPA 3D cameras. Potential candidates should submit the following information to jobs@pointclouds.org:

• a brief resume
• a list of existing PCL contributions (if any)
• a list of projects (emphasis on open source projects please) that they contributed to in the past

This project requires good…

The mobile revolution is upon us! Who says mobile platforms are only good for email and Facebook? Why not 3-D perception and scientific visualization? Today's phones and tablets ship with multi-core CPUs, gigabytes of RAM, and more pixels than you can see. If you want to run Point Cloud Library on your iPhone, then who's to stop you? Mobile is here.

The Point Cloud Library community, Willow Garage, NVidia and Kitware are pleased to announce their collaboration to bring point cloud visualization to the mobile domain. You don't have to stop at visualization either; why not run a couple of PCL filters on your device while you're at it? Development sponsored by the NVidia Code Sprint has brought examples of point cloud streaming mobile clients, apps that read PCD files and execute PCL filters, and point cloud visualizations with millions of points.

We are proud to announce that the first ever PCL code sprint has recently ended, with the submission of the final reports.

• Alexandru-Eugen Ichim, from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, has worked on surface reconstruction and point cloud smoothing.
• Maurice Fallon and Hordur Johannsson, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, have worked on real-time global point cloud localization.

More details about what they have contributed with during this period, and the final reports can be found on the TOCS developer's blog: http://pointclouds.org/blog/tocs/.

We are now…

PCL-NVCS is ready to start! The sprint will cover 3D algorithmic work for human body recognition, deformable object modeling, and real-time visualization on Tegra3 platforms. Here's a list of the PCL developers working on the sprint:

• Pat Marion, a member of the scientific visualization group at Kitware, will be working on point cloud streaming to Tegra3 devices for mobile visualization. Pat brings in years of experience by having had worked on large 3D visualization engines such as VTK, ParaView, and VES.
• Koen Buys from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, will be working on human body tracking from point cloud data. Koen is already a PCL developer and has been working on body tracking using GPUs as part of his doctoral research.
• Martin Saelzle from Technische Universitaet Muenchen, will be working on deformable object modeling for PCL. Martin acquired extensive experience in point cloud registration using Kinect sensors while working in Prof. Nassir Navab's group at TUM.

We would like to thank all the other candidates for their excellent proposals! We already started…