Author: Rickard Laurenius

All of the separate elements of the project have been added together and it is starting to look more and more like a finished product!
The editor allows you to set the paths of all moving objects that you place into the scene.

Here we see moving pedestrians being placed, their paths being set. and the sensor being able to recognize their poses while they are not just moving, but being animated as well.

In addition to the static pedestrian meshes. We have added moving pedestrians that are a little less human-shaped, but in return has moving colliders, so that the simulted lidar will measure its movement when passing by. It also uses the navigation system to move along an editable path.

Look at him run!

Oh… you can’t because it’s a still image?

Well we can assure you he runs! Oh does he run!

/The Lidar Group

To make the simulator versatile and useful for the user, we planned on having a drag & drop editor and a GUI to change the parameters of the simulated LIDAR sensor. Now these plans have come to fruition and we have both the drag & drop feature and the GUI in place. Some more refinements might have to be made but it works! Isn’t it pretty?

GUI by Jonathan

In just one  two-week “sprint” as the “scrum” methodology calls it. Our group has produced a fully functional simulated lidar sensor! We all expected this part of the project to take a lot longer and to come with unknown technical hurdles. But much to our delight, the implementation went smoothly, and by using a game-engine, we got access to a lot of ready-made functionality that suited the project perfectly.

The simulated lidar sensor we built uses Unity’s built in ability to cast a ray from a source point onto collidable objects and see where the ray hits, much like how a real life lidar would do it. We even managed to make it behave similar to the way a real sensor would. Refinements will be made in future updates, making it even more similar to the real deal.

Virtual lidar sensor in Unity 5 (Philip Tibom)

Now the focus has shifted to the features that we want to support. Including an editor and the export of the generated lidar data into some appropriate format. Moving cars and pedestrians, and pathfinding for them is also going to be explored. As is visualization of the collected lidar data, as points in a 3D space.

So far, the current progress has made us hopeful for the future of the project. Our spirits are high, and we are ready to deal with the challenges ahead.

/ The Lidar Group