nvblox

An open-source, GPU-accelerated 3D mapping library from NVIDIA that builds real-time distance-field maps for obstacle avoidance.

nvblox is an open-source voxel mapping library from NVIDIA, described in a paper at ICRA 2024. Running on the GPU, it incrementally fuses data from an RGB-D camera or lidar into a TSDF (truncated signed distance function, which records how far each voxel is from the nearest surface), and computes an ESDF (Euclidean signed distance field) in real time for collision checking during path planning. The paper reports speedups of up to 177x for surface reconstruction and up to 31x for distance-field computation. nvblox provides a ROS 2 interface as part of Isaac ROS, and can output costmaps for the Nav2 navigation stack to consume.

ExampleA mobile robot builds a map on the GPU with an RGB-D camera and nvblox while driving, feeding the resulting costmap to Nav2 for obstacle avoidance.

Also called

NVIDIA nvblox, Isaac ROS nvblox, isaac_ros_nvblox

Related

Truncated Signed Distance Function · Euclidean Signed Distance Field · NVIDIA Isaac ROS · ROS 2 Navigation Stack (Nav2) · Costmap · Obstacle Avoidance

Sources

nvblox: GPU-Accelerated Incremental Signed Distance Field Mapping (arXiv)
nvblox Documentation

As of

2024-05