Importing Data into OctoMap

You can build 3D maps from point cloud data (e.g., laser scans, stereo, RGB-D (Kinect)...) in the code using the insertScan(...) functions in an octree map.

Other methods of importing or converting data are detailed below.

Laser Scan Data

Plain-text laser scan data can be imported from the following file format:

NODE x y z roll pitch yaw
x y z
x y z
[...]
NODE x y z roll pitch yaw
x y z
[...]

The keyword NODE is followed by the 6D pose of the laser origin of the 3D scan (roll, pitch, and yaw angles are around the axes x, y, z respectively). After a NODE-line, the laser endpoints of the scan originating at that scan node are listed as 3D points, in the coordinate frame of the scan node. The next NODE keyword specifies the start of a new 3D scan. Lines starting with '#' or empty lines are ignored.

Our tool "log2graph" converts these plain-text log files into a binary scan graph file, which can be directly opened and converted in the viewer "octovis", or converted to an octree map from the command line with "graph2tree".

3D model files

You can create an OctoMap file from a variety of 3D file formats (3DS, VRML, OBJ ...) by first voxelizing them with binvox.

After converting your 3D data to a binvox file, you can create an Octree map from it by running our tool "binvox2bt".