Autonomous point cloud acquisition of unknown indoor scenes

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for the automatic selection of heuristic scanning positions in unknown indoor environments. The surveying is carried out by a robotic system following a stop-and-go procedure. Starting with a random scan position in the room, the point cloud is discretized in voxels and they are submitted to a two-step classification and are labelled as occupied, occluded, empty, window, door, or exterior based on a visibility analysis. The main objective of the methodology is to obtain a complete point cloud of the indoor space and accordingly, the next best position is the scan position minimizing occluded voxels. Because the method locates doors and windows, the room can be delimited and the scan can continue for adjacent rooms. This approach has been tested in a real case study, in which three scans were developed.