Using rtabmap for 2D mapping using 3D sensors

[kaineub]

I am running rtabmap with ROS on a vehicle equipped with a ZED camera and two 16 line lidars on opposite corners that we have combined into a single cloud. I am currently using the RGB-D data for building the map and the lidars for building the obstacle layer. We only need the 2D map for navigation when we are running online and we run into performance issues when doing 3D mapping. I was hoping there was a way that we could only build the map in 2D to help it run faster.

I have Reg/Force3DoF set to true and Grid/3D set to false but I still get output on the cloud_map topic. I could try converting the sources into 2D laserscan data and feed that into rtabmap but that seems wasteful to me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[matlabbe]

Normally with Grid/3D=false, the cloud_map topic (the PointCloud2 one) should be 2D. Can you share the database?