Mapping 3d point clouds with Héctor slam and a lidar is possible?

Let's Make Robots Beginners
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Hello everyone.

I’m new to lidar systems and looking for some information so please forgive if the questions are stupids.

I’ve heard about lidar Slam and Ros and I’ve seen some companies as Slamtec that sell lidar systems with Hector slam incorporated. As far as I understand this Slam is what make possible to locate the lidar sensor in real space and then generate point clouds used to map an space.

My question is if I can use any of this affordable lidars and create 3d point clouds to generate 3d mapping as well, and what should I need to generate a 3d point cloud of for example my room.

Could someone please give me some orientation about this to start researching how could I get 3d point clouds or make me some rovommendation? Thank you very much in advance!.. I would really appreciate any help

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Hello @Zorin and welcome to the RobotShop community,

I’m no expert in the field but I’m pretty sure you can only generate 2D point clouds with the 360 Lidars Slamtec offers. However, it is possible to create 3D maps with the 2D points by using 3D mapping software, again I’m no expert but doing a quick search on Google I found this:


You could also check the Multi-beam Scanners section to see if one of the sensors available could work for what you have in mind.

There are also 3D scanners but the options available in the store are either too expensive (IIIDScanPRO Asus 3D Scanner) or not suited for room mapping (Matter and Form Portable 3D Scanner V2).

I hope this helps :grin:

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Hello Geraldine,

Thanks so much for your reply, I had no idea about that… Thanks for the info!. About Slamtec it is more less what I expected. I emailed the company and they gave me an ambiguous answer. They said it is like a book page and I needed “something” to get all the pages together… In their promotional video it seems the scanner is tracking the points while the guy is moving so I was wondering if it would be possible to rotate it and get points in the 3d space… I found a great solution which was the sweep scanse lidar… But they discontinued it.

The articles are great and very interesting. I didn’t know those that you sent and even if they are pretty expensive maybe it is not that bad for a small studio so thanks a lot for sending!

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hey said it is like a book page and I needed “something” to get all the pages together

Exactly! You can get a bunch of different 2D point clouds of the same room in different heights, that way the 360 lidar maps its surroundings in 2D (x, y) and you (or maybe an actuator) moves it in the z axis to get the map in different heights, then you need that “something” they mentioned, which would be a mapping software like the ones mentioned in the articles I linked in the previous post to put it all together and create the 3D map.

Again, I’m no expert in the field but I’m glad I could help :smiley:

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For 3d point clouds try RTAB-Map, current cameras you can buy for this includes the intel realsense and Orbbec Astra.

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Very useful! thanks again Geraldine… As far as I could see this technology is emerging but pretty expensive right. But these articles show it is possible to make your own lidar relatively cheap.
I never heard about the other systems and its very promising…

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Thanks a lot humpelstilzchen, this is awesome and as well, really appreciated, thanks!