Scalability of GPU-Processed 3D Distance Maps for Industrial Environments

This paper contains a benchmark analysis of the open source library GPU-Voxels together with the Robot Operating System (ROS) in large-scale industrial robotics environment. Six sensor nodes with embedded computing generate real-time point cloud data as ROS topics. The overall data from all sensor nodes is processed by a combination of CPU and GPU on a central ROS node. Experimental results demonstrate that the system is able to handle frame rates of 10 and 20 Hz with voxel sizes of 4, 6, 8 and 12 cm without saturation of the CPU or the GPU used by the GPU-Voxels library. The results in this paper show that ROS, in combination with GPU-Voxels, can be used as a viable solution for real-time 3D collision detection and avoidance applications in relatively large-scale industrial environments.