Introduction

For real-time applications, it is very useful to visualize the volume, for instance for debugging. This can be done currently by using marching cubles which generates a mesh. The problem is that generating meshes is very computationally expensive, unless recent commits to OpenVSB make it fast and high-quality enough. This implies, the volume currently cannot be displayed in real time.

Besides, to do ICP to correct TFs/Frames, which is necessary to do real-time, it'd be necessary to have cloudpoints in realtime, which, as said, it is not currently possible. Note that to correct errors that occur during integration ( for instance "Lady and Cow" ), ICP would potentially help. Also note, this is used in Voxblox

Note that Open3D, in its tensor SLAM pipeline, does implement this and does work realtime ( example )

Proposed Work

1 - Test whether recent changes in OpenVDB make generation of meshes quality and speed wise good enough. Also analyze different MeshToVolumeFlags 2 - In case point (1) does not hold true, then implement either in OpenVDB or in vdbfusion a way to quickly extract pointclouds ( maybe optionally with normals) in realtime.

Questions

I'd like to know. 1- Generally what's your opinion/POV regarind this line of work in terms of utility, feasabliitty etc. 2- Whether that's something you have planned to do or will do 3- Whether you need extra help with that.