Ray-based multibeam sonar

GPU Ray (Velodyne lidar) vs Raster (Depth camera)

Can't compare intensity levels since the beam angles are different.
- Both uses 512 beams, the GPU Ray version has equal beam angle spacings, but the raster version doesn't have equal beam angle spacings.
Geometry is captured correctly. When combined as a figure below, it's seamless

Local search senario comparisons

GPU Ray (Velodyne lidar) vs Raster (Depth camera)

Raster version
```
roslaunch nps_uw_multibeam_sonar local_search_blueview_p900_nps_multibeam_raster.launch
```
- Insufficient elevation rays when sonar view angle is grazing the seafloor
  - Raster (Depth-camera) based sonar plugin cannot change the number of elevation rays (Fixed with the definition of horizontal/vertical FOVs)
- 512 Horizontal Beams (Each Beam has 228 elevation rays)
Ray version
```
roslaunch nps_uw_multibeam_sonar local_search_blueview_p900_nps_multibeam_ray.launch
```
- Number of elevation rays is user-definable, of course, with the cost of calculation time
- Variational reflectivity is not usable (yet..?)
- 512 Horizontal Beams (Each Beam has 500elevation rays)

woensug-choi commented 2 years ago

@lauralindzey This is ready for you to try! 👍

woensug-choi commented 2 years ago

Note, Not up to date with https://github.com/Field-Robotics-Lab/dave/pull/185 since the variational reflectivity doesn't work for the ray-based one anyway. Distorting difference by geometric differences would work anyway :)

woensug-choi commented 2 years ago

@mabelzhang You only need ros-noetic-pcl-ros to get all the PCL libraries needed :) Could you give it a try?

woensug-choi commented 2 years ago

@mabelzhang Could you try https://github.com/Field-Robotics-Lab/nps_uw_multibeam_sonar/pull/38 instead? it includes all other PRs (#37 and #31) alive. I've added ros-noetic-pcl-ros and ros-noetic-image-view in the cuda-dev branch of dockwater.

mabelzhang commented 2 years ago

Field-Robotics-Lab / nps_uw_multibeam_sonar