PLVS II

v0.2.1

Author: Luigi Freda

PLVS is a real-time system that combines sparse SLAM, volumetric mapping, and 3D unsupervised incremental segmentation. PLVS stands for Points, Lines, Volumetric mapping, and Segmentation.

PLVS is available in two different versions.

• PLVS I: hosted in the branch plvs1. It builds on ORB-SLAM2, and supports mono, stereo, and RGB-D cameras.
• PLVS II: hosted in the master branch. It builds on ORB-SLAM3, and also supports camera systems provided with IMUs.

This document provides a list of the new features introduced by PLVS. For more information and videos, please visit this project page or refer to the following document: PLVS: A SLAM System with Points, Lines, Volumetric Mapping, and 3D Incremental Segmentation 
Luigi Freda

Note: PLVS is an active project. This README is under construction and will be updated with further information and details as new improvements are released. Stay tuned!

Quick start

• The build procedures were tested under Ubuntu 20, 22, 24.
• ROS1 support is provided only under noetic with Ubuntu 20 (see here).
• ROS2 was tested under foxy and Ubuntu 20 (further details here).

If you don't have Ubuntu 20 with noetic, check rosdocker and use the noetic or noetic_cuda containers.

NOTE: At present, under Ubuntu 24.04, BUILD_WITH_MARCH_NATIVE is set to OFF. Enabling --march=native optimization brings some problems probably due to different default building options in the native libpcl.

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Build

1. Install basic dependencies:
   $ ./install_dependencies.sh
2. Install OpenCV in a local folder:
   $ ./install_local_opencv.sh
3. Build the PLVS framework:
   $ ./build.sh

It should be easy to adapt the above procedures if you have a different OS version.

If you want to skip step 2, you can set the variables OpenCV_DIR and OPENCV_VERSION in config.sh with your local OpenCV path and version, respectively. However, this is not recommended.

ROS build

ROS 1

Under ROS noetic, open a new terminal, source the main ROS1 setup.bash and run:
$ ./build_ros_catkin.sh

This command builds the PLVS ROS1 workspace in Example_old/ROS/PLVS and deploys it in the ros_ws folder.

ROS 2

Under ROS 2, open a new terminal, source the main ROS2 setup.bash and run:
$ ./build_ros_colcon.sh

This command builds the PLVS ROS2 workspace in Example/ROS2/PLVS and deploys it in the ros2_ws folder.

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Running the examples

Once everything is built, you can enter in the Scripts folder and test the different examples. For instance you can configure and run:

• $ ./run_tum_rgbd.sh for TUM RGB-D datasets
• $ ./run_kitti_stereo.sh for KITTI datasets
• $ ./run_euroc_stereo_inertial.sh for Euroc datasets, stereo + inertial
• $ ./run_euroc_stereo.sh for Euroc datasets, only stereo
• $ ./run_tum_vi_stereo.sh for TUM VI datasets, only stereo
• $ ./run_tum_vi_stereo_inertial.sh for TUM VI datasets, stereo + inertial

In each of the above scripts, you have to configure (1) the DATASET_BASE_FOLDER, (2) the specific DATASET of interest, and (3) the used YAML configuration file. In particular, each YAML configuration file shows different sections with commented options. For a quick overview of the new features and their corresponding YAML options refer to new_features.md.

ROS 1

If you built the ROS workspace, you can use the scripts ros_xterm* to launch the PLVS ROS nodes. For instance, with the TUM datasets, configure and run ros_xterm_tum_rgbd.sh.

ROS 2

Refer to this README. At present, this is a work in progress. With the TUM datasets, configure and run ros2_xterm_tum_rgbd.sh.

Note: The ROS1 and ROS2 install paths are automatically detected by the script Scripts/find_ros.sh.

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Contributing

We welcome contributions to the codebase through pull requests, bug reports, comments, and feature proposals via issues. For any questions or feedback, please contact luigifreda(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you!

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License

PLVS is released under GPLv3 license. PLVS contains some modified libraries, each one coming with its license. Where nothing is specified, a GPLv3 license applies to the software.

If you use PLVS in your projects, please cite our above-mentioned document.

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Credits

• The PLVS I and PLVS II frameworks are based on ORB-SLAM2 and ORB-SLAM3 respectively. Many thanks to their Authors for their great work and contributions to the Research and open-source communities.
• Ther ROS 2 wrapper was inspired by this repository. Many thanks to his Author, Haebeom Jung.