FOG: Fast Octree Generator for LiDAR Point Clouds

Abstract

As the need for realistic and immersive 3-D representations of the environment continues to increase across various industries, finding efficient ways to represent data has become paramount. A well-known approach to partitioning 3-D space into a structured data format is the use of octrees, primarily due to their efficiency in handling both sparse and dense 3-D data. This method is particularly useful in applications involving automotive light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, which are widely used in autonomous driving systems for their ability to capture detailed spatial information in real-time. This letter introduces the fast octree generator (FOG) algorithm, a novel approach for generating octrees from 3-D LiDAR point clouds that leverages hardware acceleration. FOG achieves a performance improvement of up to 88.8% compared to PCL's octree implementation, enabling real-time octree generation for high-end sensors on embedded platforms.