Load map/point cloud into sim

[mcorah]

@hocherie We haven't discussed this task in a while. Are you still planning to implement pointcloud loading? Has your understanding of this issue changed or developed?

[hocherie]

Thanks for reminding! I was previously waiting on 20.04 setup instructions.

@mcorah , can you please share your docker file?

I will be out of Pittsburgh for RACER this week, so will try my best to load in point clouds by next Monday.

@rebeccacm / @mcorah , once I have instructions to how to load in pointclouds, can someone take over the task of transforming it to correct gps coordinates?

[mcorah]

@hocherie I'll post a branch to mf_ws in a minute.

[mcorah]

@hocherie I've pushed what I have. Instructions are in the dockerfile in the docker directory of mf_ws. Operation is still rough though.

[mcorah]

@andrewjong: We were planning for @hocherie to work on loading the premapped environment into the simulator, but she is not going to have time. Would you be able work with her to complete that task?

Paraphrasing from Cherie, this should consist of:

• getting mf_ws running on your computer
• change map in filming_chomp to an octomap (maybe get params from here: https://bitbucket.org/castacks/filming_chomp/commits/7448e963d8ac1fbe9ac5bc25a04ecd8ba4746d0d)
• convert hawkins map to bt (@hocherie: not sure what you mean here), adjust for GPS coordinates (ask Micah for relevant Google doc)

[mcorah]

Also, mf_ws still only works natively in Ubuntu 18.04. If you want to use a different version (e.g. 20.04), you may want to work on my docker installation as well or use a different system.

[mcorah]

Removing dependency since @andrewjong will probably not be using docker.

[hocherie]

Discussed with Andrew. add as tasks:

• cross validate with actor paths on full map
• evaluate timings with different map sizes

[andrewjong]

Update: since Micah said he needed this Mid June, I have started today and plan to finish this week.

Monday 2022.06.06

• mf_ws installed again and built
• successfully ran sim

  Start sim
  In ~/, run 'roscore'
  In ~/ (second terminal), run 'source ./mf_ws/devel/setup.bash'
  In second terminal, run 'mon launch core_central fake_twodrone_djibased.launch'

• learning OctoMap API

[andrewjong]

Tuesday 2022.06.06

• Question: What file type should I be importing?
• faro scan .fls files eventually go to a fairly standard pointcloud format. so don't need to worry about .fls. .ply file is fairly likely. whatever pcl likes to load. https://pcl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reading_pcd.html
• Micah link me to representative output to test on. Pits and mines
• some troubles with assembling the hawkins pointcloud for now. just find some templates to load in
• pcd file into octomap https://answers.ros.org/question/66319/pcd-to-octree/

[mcorah]

To follow up:

• Should be a PCD file
• Uland got back to me. Sounds like their CMS is going through an overhaul so the links are down. Once they're back. You'll be able to find the data from here: https://ulandwong.com/datasets

[andrewjong]

Notes:

• downloaded an open source satellite pointcloud file of hawkins for now using portal.opentopography.org
• converted .las file to .pcd using CloudCompare
• published .pcd file as point cloud using PCL

TODO: convert to Octree and Octomap

[andrewjong]

This Octomap produced from the above pointcloud takes about 20 seconds to load on my desktop. It is a 3m x 3m resolution.