I want to detect negative obstacles such as pits and holes in the floor using laser scan. I am completely new to ROS and C++. any help would be appreciated

General Support
1

I want to detect sudden changes in laser scan as it hits the ground after scanning through the pit/hole

2

Hi,

Well what you are asking could be done in a fast simple way or in many other ways, some more complex.
But in all options you will have to create a laser_scan topic susbcriber that captures the data.
Once that is done, then I would try two things:

  1. The laser has to point to the ground, mantaining a constant reading. Then save always the previous mesurement and compare it with the current one. If you detect certain delta , then you might be detecting a hole.
  2. Another option would be to use DeepLearning to show it to recognise and locate pits and holes by a set of controled training examples.

You decide :wink: . Please poste here the solution you end up doing through a ROSject or git.