LIDAR-equipped robot maps dangerous areas in 3D so you don't have to
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted February 23rd 2010 11:53AM
posted February 23rd 2010 11:53AM
Looks like the kids at MIT might have a little competition for their LIDAR-equipped 3D mapping drone. Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have teamed up with the University of Missouri-Columbia for a prototype robot that uses light detection and ranging (similar to RADAR, but with lasers) to map areas and send the 3D data to a nearby laptop. The technology not only provides detailed info on floor plans and physical structures (such as possible structural damage) but it can also "see" people inside a space. There are many possible applications for this, from spotting terrorists hiding in caves to seeing if your new internet girlfriend really looks like her profile pic, or -- and this is especially important in the modern era -- seeing if your new internet girlfriend is actually a terrorist (we wondered why she wanted that first meeting to take place in a cave). "Once you have the images, you can zoom in on objects and look at things from different angles," says Dr. Norbert Maerz, associate professor of geological engineering at Missouri S&T -- an ability that we wish we had while browsing PlentyofFish.com.
I literally helped design and build it! I never thought something I worked on would show up on engadget. This is awesome!
@palaceRocky does it pew pew?
@palaceRocky awesome software, mate, but i'll have to agree it needs more flames and lasers and uncanny valleyness
@palaceRocky nice man, How did you get the scissor lift working? pneumatics, hydraulics or motors? I have been working on my own scissor lift for quite some time with motors, and its not easy unless the motors are really strong.
@Ducman69 if you wish hard enough
@abedinthehouse the lifts are operated using linear actuators that operate on 24v. however this is one thing we would like to change in the design. do away with the scissor lifts and use something much more lite weight
Also for the record the students that did this are:
Darrell M. Williams II and
Kiernan Shea
@palaceRocky How accurately is it able to track it's horizontal location as it moves? The outdoor mobile mappers rely largely on a combination of IMU and GPS, this uses what.. an IMU and monitors the tracks rotation?
@csnoke It isn't really intended for outdoor use, as of now. It is controlled remotely, over wifi, and the PTZ camera is used to see where it is going. It is manually moved in to position and then the LIDAR unit on top does the scan. Once there are enough scans they are then stitched together using the software the LIDAR came with. So it doesn't track it's position. As long as a scan has enough points in common with another scan you can make an extremely accurate 3D model of the structure. We were are all mechanical engineers that worked on this, so there is definitely some improvements that can be made on the software side. With this specific LIDAR unit I don't think it is possible to do scans on the go. That would be a nice feature to add though. The LIDAR unit we had access to extremely powerful as far as precision and the amount of points it can scan.
Sooo, is the laser blinding the people it finds?
@HansImGlueck nope. the laser is reflected off of a very fast spinning mirror. it might be able to if you could get it to stop spinning and stared at it long enough
I don't mean to knock anyone's work but what added benefit is there to having this do 3D? Wouldn't straight video be faster, cheaper, and more compact? Why would 3D do a better job detecting Osama than a 2D live stream on a much smaller and faster robot?
@advs89 Interior mapping robots are a hot topic right now in the engineering and geospatial market. The combination of LIDAR, inertial measurement units, GPS and sophisticated point cloud software makes it possible to largely automate a very manual and laborious process of modeling interior as-built conditions.
That said, I don't know that this system will be catching any terrorists. The laser scanner used in this project is an off the shelf Leica HDS6100 probably costs $80-$120k and it is fairly slow in terms of acquisiton time. It probably takes 3 minutes to do a full scan.. no one with a bomb strapped to themselves is going to stand there while this thing does its business.
@csnoke Yeah i'm not sure why they decided to say this was to catch terrorists. I'm pretty sure that the purpose of this setup is to acquire data to analyze the structure and see how safe it is before you send in people.
It only takes about 1 min or so per scan, at the scan density that is needed for this application. You can make these scans take well over 15 min if you use a high scan density.
@palaceRocky yeah that make a lot more sense... after rereading the summary I realize that was intended as a joke. I imagine structural analysis (like you mentioned) is the real intended purpose.