Descriptors for Pointclouds

Question

i have been trying to figure out how some of those descriptors in the PCL work but they somehow give weird results. Especially the most interesting one - the VFH descriptor - is supposed to be a histogram whereas clearly some angle value is mixed at the beginning of the 'histogram' with some other kind of info so I am asking whether i am using it wrong or maybe my input clouds are bad.

Moreover, has anyone experience with proper/good point cloud descriptors which you can recommend? Any insight would be nice.

This is the result I get - any idea?

# .PCD v0.7 - Point Cloud Data file format
VERSION 0.7
FIELDS vfh
SIZE 4
TYPE F
COUNT 308
WIDTH 1
HEIGHT 1
VIEWPOINT 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
POINTS 1
DATA ascii
99.981308 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99.981308 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99.981308 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 97.009056 0 0 0.015782828 0.0039457069 0 0.02367424 0.047348488 0.059185613 0.055239905 0.059185613 0.027619947 0.055239905 0.04340278 0.019728534 0.035511363 0.02367424 0.047348488 0.039457072 0.04340278 0.015782828 0.067077026 0.019728534 0.047348488 0.02367424 0.019728534 0.039457072 0.015782828 0.04340278 0.027619947 0.039457072 0.039457072 0.015782828 0.02367424 0.02367424 0.015782828 0.031565655 0 0.027619947 0.011837121 0.011837121 0.015782828 0.031565655 0.031565655 0.04340278 0.027619947 0.0039457069 0.011837121 0.0039457069 0.015782828 0.027619947 0 0 0.015782828 0.0078914138 0.02367424 0.0078914138 0.0039457069 0.011837121 0.015782828 0.0039457069 0.031565655 0.015782828 0.02367424 0.0078914138 0.019728534 0.0039457069 0.011837121 0 0 0.0039457069 0.019728534 0.011837121 0 0.011837121 0.0039457069 0.0078914138 0.019728534 0.0078914138 0.02367424 0 0 0.0078914138 0.0078914138 0.015782828 0.015782828 0.015782828 0.015782828 0.011837121 0.011837121 0.0078914138 0.019728534 0.0078914138 0.019728534 0.0078914138 0.015782828 0.0078914138 0.0039457069 0.015782828 0.011837121 0.019728534 0.027619947 0.027619947 0.011837121 0.0039457069 0.0039457069 0.0078914138 0.0078914138 0.0078914138 0.0078914138 0.02367424 0 0.0039457069 0 0.0039457069 0.035511363 0 0.019728534 0.027619947 0.019728534 0.04340278 0.059185613 0.074968442 0.13415407 0.1025884 0.11837123 0.13020836 0.13809977

Answer 1

What are you going to use the descriptor for? I'm mostly familiar with descriptors useful as features for keypoints for cloud to cloud registration. Here are links I found useful when I was playing with PCL registration algorithms:

• http://www.di.ubi.pt/~lfbaa/pubs/iros2012.pdf
• http://www-oldurls.inf.ethz.ch/personal/zeislb/publications/aldoma_2012jram_PCLTutorial.pdf
• presentations in http://www.pointclouds.org/media/ especially those in links on top of the page: RSS2011 IROS2011 ICCV2011 ICRA2012 CRV2012 CVPR2012 IROS2012 ICRA2013 CGLIBS13
• PCL code
• google :-)