Data processing from a Laser Range Finder sensor for the construction of geometric maps of an indoor environment

In this paper we propose a methodology to detect lines or edges for a later construction of geometric maps using a URG-04LX laser range finder from Hokuyo Automatic, Co. First, the algorithm decodes the raw data from the sensor, using URG series, into a list of points in polar coordinates. Afterward, it converts to x-y coordinates in order to have the first image. The list of points is reduced using sub sampling, and then it applies Hough transform to obtain line segments. The Hough transform is applied in several cycles, using masks to erase lines already found and detect new lines segments. At the end, the algorithm is able to group up to 90.32% of the points in the original image.