BlenSor is a modified Blender version for LIDAR Simulation.
Michael Gschwandtner writes:
BlenSor is a modified Blender version for LIDAR Simulation. It is specifically designed for the verification of range data processing algorithms. The current state of BlenSor is very early beta - some might even call it alpha ;)
And of course it is not only meant to do serious stuff with, you can use it for any purpose you want.
To have some fun we created a short video inspired by the House of Cards video from Radiohead.The current version supports PCD export. So if you are using the pointcloud library you can use BlenSor to create yourself some test data (if you don't have a velodyne/sick/swissranger lying around).
5 Comments
Didn't really understand what was going on here first, but this was pretty helpful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyQoTGdQywY&hl . Always nice to see Blender used for some serious over-my-head stuff, but a "Blensor for LIDAR-ignorants"-explanation would be cool :)
@cb5f03b5ac67666c2ddc14aa3765e87c:disqus : Thank you. I totally ignored the fact that most people probably never heard of LIDAR.
The "Making of" video you posted is definitely a very helpful resource.
For those who don't want to watch the video. The "House of cards" video from Radiohead was entirely "shot" with LIDAR (and structured light) scanners.
Basically what they do is create a pointcloud of the scanned objects (in realtime). In case of radiohead the whole video is simply a visualization of those pointclouds. A unique property of this technology and espically the radiohead video is the fact that the scanning process is not perfect. The measurements are subject to noise and the fact that only the part of the surface that is visible to the scanner can be scanned creates in my opinion a unique visual appearance. It's simply not perfect and thats what makes it interesting.
I hope this explains a little what's going on in the video above.
In Civil Engineering, we ask Surveyors to give us 3D surfaces of ground topology; which they use LIDAR (among other technologies) to generate it.
We have not yet tried to use it for this purpose but it would be definitely possible. However to out knowledge there are other simulators especially for this purpose.
for example http://home.iitk.ac.in/~blohani/Limulator/publication/Lohani_2007.pdf