LiDAR Point Cloud Transfer and Rendering for SimulationPurposes

Abstract: Digital twins in manufacturing, logistics, retail, and healthcare can help companies makebusiness decisions by simulating changes prior to implementing such changes in real life.In robotic teleoperation, virtual reality technology such as head mounted displays canincrease operator performance. In the mining equipment industry, teleoperation is quitean established concept, using a video feed for visualization, and often similiar or the samecontrol panels as on the real machine. However, cameras don’t provide depth perceptionfor the operator, and the lighting conditions in a mine may make photogrammetry a lessthan ideal solution. Epiroc is currently working on a digital twin simulation softwarein Unity, which could be extended for teleoperation purposes. As a complement to thissoftware, a fast, high-definition Ouster OS0-128 LiDAR was used to render a point cloudof a physical environment. A Unity GameObject script was written in C# that receivesand renders coordinates as a point cloud. Two Python scripts were written to convert theLiDAR data using the Ouster SDK to coordinates, and then sending these coordinates overa TCP connection, either on the same machine, or over Wi-Fi. The Python scripts used twodifferent data formats, and the performance difference between these two data formatswas compared. The results indicated that Wi-Fi transfer of LiDAR data could be a viablesolution to continously scanning the surrounding area of equipment being teleoperatedwith quite a low delay and latency