Design principles for 2D local mapping using a laser range finder

This paper presents a guide on how to obtain a local map from a SICK LMS291 laser range finder (LRF). The type of local map produced is a feature map, where the objects (or features) in the world are represented by line segments. Much research has been done on local maps and how they are created with a LRF. However, there is usually a fundamental link missing on the hardware setup (and software commands) to allow a local map to be produced in a real world situation from a SICK LMS291 LRF. A design principle is therefore produced, which consists of two main aspects. The first aspect is a hardware setup, which uses off the shelf components to allow the SICK LMS291 LRF to operate at a baud rate of 500 000 baud. At a rate of 500 000 baud the LRF is able to return the highest possible resolution scan of its environment. The second aspect are the steps to implement a line extraction algorithm, which allows one to fit line segments to offline data sets and to data points extracted from the LRF in real time.