I just got an RPLiDAR A1 accidentally (somebody left it at work), and as I’m looking online at its capabilities, I’m interested into it more and more.
The little project I though of is to create a plan view (with a point cloud) of my apartment. From my research so far, it seems I’m going to need SLAM abilities and some sort of mapping algorithm (Hector or Google Cartographer seem the most popular ones).
However, although there is plenty of information online, I am not able to find any tutorial on this (I think) relatively simple model. Keep in mind that for the moment I’m not envisioning of having a robot automatically moving around; it’s going to be just me or a radio controlled machine.
Please let me know your thoughts, or any useful links. Bear in mind I’m not familiar with robots or anything, but I have an engineering background to understand the physics behind it, and some programming skills.
One time I “accidentally” got a Corvette. This guy left it in the parking lot while he went to get lunch, so I got it.
I’m not really sure why you are making this so complicated. I must be missing something important. You have a lidar in a room mounted on a base that turns. At each point in the turn, you measure the distance to an obstacle. Then you store that direction and distance in whatever coordinate system you desire and you have a map.
What am I missing?
OK. So you need the coordinate of where you are and add the vector (direction and distance) to get the coordinate of the measured point. A simple addition.
