Is a kinect a accurate way to simulate a Velodyne 16?

Question

Hello everyone!

I'm starting a project with ROS that needs a reliable simulation world with a Velodyne 16 sensor. The catch is I don't have access to the lidar sensor during a couple of months and was planning to use the simulation environment to start working on some plan algorithms that the real robot will use.

So far my options for modeling the Velodyne 16 are: a) a kinect (outputs a point cloud) b) the sensor built in http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=guided_i1. (this outputs laser rays)

Since I can't really experiment with the real thing, I'm not sure if it is reliable to use a) and it's point cloud and assume it's equivalent to get laser ray output with velodyne_driver and then transform it to a point cloud with velodyne_pointcloud.

I'm using hydro.

Thank you for any input.

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Originally posted by kotoko on ROS Answers with karma: 122 on 2016-07-07

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by joq on 2016-07-07:
I assume you are referring to something different from the ROS Kinetic distro, so no idea what you are asking about.

Comment by kotoko on 2016-07-08:
I edited the question, I think now it's more explanatory.

Comment by joq on 2016-07-08:
So, what is a "kinetic"?

Comment by kotoko on 2016-07-11:
Sorry, kinect ... stupid typo...

Answer 1

If you want to simulate a Velodyne LIDAR, it can be done using Gazebo:

• http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=guided_i1
• http://wiki.ros.org/velodyne_gazebo_plugins

EDIT: OK, now I understand you are not talking about software simulation, like with Gazebo. You want to use a Kinect device to simulate the output of a Velodyne.

While both devices provide 3D data, they work quite differently. Their ranges, resolutions and fields of view are very different.

Not knowing what you are trying to discover using the substitution, I can't say whether using a Kinect will help or not. Very likely, the results would be confusing.

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Originally posted by joq with karma: 25443 on 2016-07-07

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by kotoko on 2016-07-08:
Yes, I did that really cool tutorial but got confused on why the output was laser ray and not point cloud. It was actually where the confusion started from.

Comment by joq on 2016-07-08:
Sorry that link was misleading. There is a velodyne gazebo plugin, but I can't find a link to it right now.

Comment by joq on 2016-07-08:
Here it is: http://wiki.ros.org/velodyne_gazebo_plugins

Comment by kotoko on 2016-08-04:
I ended up switching to the http://wiki.ros.org/velodyne_simulator for this same reason.