SIMULATION: simulate velodyne lidar in gazebo
kev-the-dev opened this issue · comments
There is a velodyne_simulator program that we copied into the repo. With #355, this is currently not used in gazebo.
We should run the GPU-accelerated version of the velodyne simulator. However, I believe this will cause beams to reflect of the water. This can be modified to filter out points at the water level (besides some random noise?) to provide a more realistic simulation.
Consider adding an option to disable the velodyne simulation at runtime, as it will significantly slow the simulator.
There is an issue on vmrc for this. One solutions is using OGRE viewports.
Here's some notes:
Visuals (CollisionVisuals is likely the one for ocean) have a set visibility flag function where you can set a mask for what things see it.
GpuRaySensor has a OgreViewport function which gives you the OgreViewport which has a setVisibilityMask function.
Setting the ray sensor to a mask which does not contain the bit set in the collision should make it disappear from the ray. This could be implemented as a sensor plugin which accepts a list of models/collisions to hide from the sensor.