[Bug]: Improve Lidar point cloud quality

[ll7]

Current Behavior

Lidar displays only one half of the rotation.

Expected Behavior

Lidar should improve the such that identified objects can be reliably located.

How to reproduce the issue

No response

[ll7]

Current dev configuration is not allowed.

@okrusch

From my perspective, you used the following code in your dev_objects.json: https://github.com/una-auxme/paf23/blob/7f5c521f202d65c8bcff22f4787569cfff05c94f/code/agent/config/dev_objects.json#L114-L123

I think that you are only allowed to use x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw in the leaderboard.

https://leaderboard.carla.org/get_started/#33-override-the-sensors-method mentions you can only use the following:

{'type': 'sensor.lidar.ray_cast', 'id': 'LIDAR',
         'x': 0.7, 'y': -0.4, 'z': 1.60, 'roll': 0.0, 'pitch': 0.0, 'yaw': -45.0},

Furthermore, this section mentions:

Most of the sensor attributes have fixed values. These can be checked in agent_wrapper.py. This is done so that all the teams compete within a common sensor framework.

So, rotation_frequency is not a parameter you are allowed to change.

https://github.com/carla-simulator/leaderboard/blob/8956c4e0c53bfa24e2bd0ccb1a5269ce47770a57/leaderboard/autoagents/agent_wrapper.py#L110-L125

[ll7]

Two ideas to reduce the issue with the lidar

Rotate the Lidar 90° around the z-axis.

• You are only using one camera facing forward.
• Rotate the LIDAR 90° around the z-axis such that the blinking is no longer left and right, but front and rear.
• Only update the perception output after each successful update of the LIDAR information from the front facing half of the LIDAR.

Concatenate the Pointcloud information

• Concatenate the last two point cloud messages
• At least, the 360° information is available, even though one half is 1/10s old.
• Think about using a tool like perception_pcl and pcl_conversions.

https://wiki.ros.org/pcl_conversions

https://github.com/ros-perception/perception_pcl/blob/0722a701d4ea47dc0b5bb5bebd67179b5b341135/pcl_conversions/include/pcl_conversions/pcl_conversions.h#L641-L643

https://docs.ros.org/en/indigo/api/pcl_conversions/html/namespacepcl.html

[ll7]

Lidar 90° rotated

Screencast from 12.03.2024 12:08:02.webm

[ll7]

Vision Node does not produce any output image.

[ll7]

https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla/issues/2886#issuecomment-650014811

Indicates that <arg name='fixed_delta_seconds' default='0.1'/> has to be equal to the rotation frequency of the lidar.

[ll7]

Dev launch with 0.1 seconds.

Screencast from 12.03.2024 16:42:32.webm

[ll7]

Game Time in the leaderboard is not yet configured correctly.

Screencast from 12.03.2024 16:45:39.webm

[ll7]

paf23-agent/opt/leaderboard/leaderboard/leaderboard_evaluator.py

Sets the frame_rate = 20.0. How can I change this to 10.0?

[ll7]

This comment shows that a mismatch between the LIDAR frequency and the world frame-rate is a known problem.

https://github.com/carla-simulator/leaderboard/issues/54#issuecomment-667710527

[ll7]

This commit changes the world frame_rate from 20 to 10 to match the LIDAR rotation frequency. This change was committed to a fork of the leaderboard repository in our organization.

https://github.com/una-auxme/leaderboard/commit/0506c4c4cdd5a0896a5bd6b40a558e5050f66965

Info: We can decide to use any other frame rate!

[ll7]

final screencast with frame_rate=10 and lidar freq = 10

Screencast from 12.03.2024 17:23:25.webm

[ll7]

Due to https://github.com/carla-simulator/leaderboard/pull/167#issuecomment-2066320231 I changed the lidar Frequency from 10 to 20 and the world fps from 10 to 20 in https://github.com/una-auxme/leaderboard/commit/55a60afc4d60ec1e6766c8640106d377f788fbc5

We should track any further development in https://github.com/carla-simulator/leaderboard/pull/167