Request to add "intensity" field to the PointCloud2 message

[ghost]

Feature request

The plugin only supplied the x,y and z fields to the message. Refer this line.

The resulting message fields look like this:

fields:
- name: x
  offset: 0
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: y
  offset: 4
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: z
  offset: 8
  datatype: 7
  count: 1

But for reference, the Gazebo GPU Lidar supplies the following fields,

fields:
- name: x
  offset: 0
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: y
  offset: 4
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: z
  offset: 8
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: intensity
  offset: 16
  datatype: 7
  count: 1
- name: ring
  offset: 24
  datatype: 4
  count: 1

The ring field might not be that necessary, but the intensity field is. And it does look like the field might be available in the API core.h.

I understand this might make filling the message data a little more complicated and inefficient, since this will mean doing a strided copy of the intensity field into the data array, which is not as elegant as using memcpy here, but the intensity field is an important features that many projects rely on.

I will be looking at verifying that the intensity field is in fact calculated and reliable in the API.

Please let me know your thoughts.

[prybicki]

Hi @AJsamk

I answered your related issue on RGL repository.

This will be solved in the future (at the earliest in June).

[adamdbrw]

@AJsamk considering the feature was added, are we ok to close the task?

[ghost]

Hi @adamdbrw , can you point me to the PR/commit that adds the feature please? I have added with a lot of changes on my fork but would like to see if I can use the upstream version.

[msz-rai]

@AJsamk @adamdbrw We have added an intensity feature to our native library in version 0.14.0. However, the integration with Gazebo Plugin still needs to be done.

I suppose we can close the task on the RGL repository, but this task is still open.

[ajsampathk]

Had to change accounts, I am still active :)

[msz-rai]

The issue has already been resolved with https://github.com/RobotecAI/RGLGazeboPlugin/pull/34 Thank you @ajsampathk for your assistance in completing this feature :+1: