ROS+Oak-D: Turning a depth image into a 2-D laser scan for obstacle avoidance.

When we applied to the #OpenCV Spatial AI Competition #Oak2021, the very first issue we told the organizers we were going to solve using an Oak-D stereo camera was the inability of our robot to avoid obstacles located lower than the range of its 2D lidar. Back then we had no idea how we were going to do this, but we knew a stereo camera could help. In this video we present our solution. The video does not show it yet in action during autonomous navigation, but it explains how we will be turning depth images from two front facing Oak-D cameras to create 2 virtual 2D lidars that can avoid obstacles located near the floor.