Geometric verification of a LiDAR simulator

Many kinds of LIDAR systems have been developed according to their specific purposes. Also, the system simulation studies have been conducted simultaneously to predict its performance and to determine optimal system parameters. However, the validation of simulation systems in previous studies was not fully satisfactory, since most of researchers focused on simulation techniques only without considering validation. In this study, we propose verification techniques for a simulation algorithm in geometric aspect. This method is to analyze the geometric similarity by comparing the simulated results with real point cloud. We developed the LIDAR simulation software in our previous study. The simulator, which can generate the point cloud with given parameters, is based on comprehensive studies including geometric, radiometric, optic and electronic models. It can also deal with the geometric errors, radiometric, and electronic noises. To verify our simulation algorithm, we first created a simple miniature, and constructed the model data with its geometry, formatted in B-rep. We then generated the simulated and real point cloud on the same targets, and compared both data sets. The experimental results showed that the geometry of the simulated point cloud was similar to the real data. We expect that our method will be useful to validate and improve the LIDAR simulation to resemble the real system, more closely.