Hokuyo UST-10lx LiDAR data not consistent

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

Hi: I am using hokuyo UST-10LX LiDAR on my robot moving in an indoor environment. I found the data is not consistent. At one moment, the data is like the left part of the image below:

pp
pp3128×1388 139 KB

The robot is the green bar in the image, moving at a slow speed, about 10mph, toward the bottom of the image. Yellow dots are LiDAR points. One side of the wall is pointed by the red array and is at the correct location in this image. The wall is kind of at the back of the robot. The LiDAR has 270 degree view.

At the next moment, however, the data is like the right part of the image above. The wall location is too close to the robot and is totally wrong.

Anyone knows why?

2

Hi! I don’t have any experience with LIDARs, but as far as I know they use near infrared laser pulses to measure the time of flight(ToF) from the targeted surface back to the ToF sensor, so this method will work most reliably if your surfaces are close to diffuse and you don’t have other infrared light source in the scene. I think the former shouldn’t be a problem in most cases, but the latter is much more likely if you have strong direct sunlight or some infrared illuminator in your environment.