Segmentation fault with PCL when transforming point clouds

Question

I am getting a segmentation fault with pcl::transformPointCloud.

This is all I am getting on the terminal:

ros2 run cpp_tests icp_test
initialized
101201
Transforming
[ros2run]: Segmentation fault

My PCL version is 1.12.1.

The line that is causing the error is:

pcl::transformPointCloud(*cloud_in, *cloud_icp, icp_transform);

cloud_in and cloud_icp are both pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr, and icp_transform is obtained from PCL and is Eigen::Matrix4f. cloud_in had the input cloud in it, cloud_icp would be empty (it was defined as pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr cloud_icp; but not used before this point).

I would like to solve this issue or find a workaround. As far as I can tell, I have only PCL 1.12.1 on my system. I am using ROS2 humble on Ubuntu 22.04. This was compiled using colcon build --symlink-install and compiled without any errors.

Thanks.

Answer 1

With the definition of cloud_icp from your first post, you just declare a pointer of type¹

pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>

However, its not pointing to an existing pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ> Pointcloud and thus your program crashes when entering the function.
The approach from your own answer

cloud_icp = pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr (new pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>(360,1));

creates an underlying Pointcloud.

¹: More precisely, it is a smart pointer of type std::shared_ptr<pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>>.

Answer 2

I found a workaround. Adding

cloud_icp = pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr (new pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>(360,1));

to the constructor solved the problem. I don't know why that helped.