cilantro: A Lean, Versatile, and Efficient Library for Point Cloud Data Processing

TL;DR

cilantro is a versatile, efficient, and easy-to-use open-source C++ library that supports comprehensive point cloud data processing, including segmentation, alignment, and visualization, suitable for diverse workflows.

Contribution

cilantro introduces a highly optimized, templated C++ library offering extensive point cloud processing functionalities with a focus on usability and flexibility.

Findings

Supports arbitrary data dimensions and workflows.

Provides efficient algorithms for segmentation and alignment.

Minimal external dependencies and high performance.

Abstract

We introduce cilantro, an open-source C++ library for geometric and general-purpose point cloud data processing. The library provides functionality that covers low-level point cloud operations, spatial reasoning, various methods for point cloud segmentation and generic data clustering, flexible algorithms for robust or local geometric alignment, model fitting, as well as powerful visualization tools. To accommodate all kinds of workflows, cilantro is almost fully templated, and most of its generic algorithms operate in arbitrary data dimension. At the same time, the library is easy to use and highly expressive, promoting a clean and concise coding style. cilantro is highly optimized, has a minimal set of external dependencies, and supports rapid development of performant point cloud processing software in a wide variety of contexts.