Beyond Visibility: Real-Time Surface Accessibility Fields from Sparse LiDAR
Bradley Scott, Sam Schofield, Richard Green
Understanding which surfaces a given tool can physically access is fundamental to robotic interaction, yet 3D perception typically stops at geometric reconstruction or visibility estimation. Visibility does not imply accessibility: a visible point may still be blocked by tool geometry or approach-corridor clearance. We propose the Accessibility Field: a per-point surface accessibility labelling, computed from streaming sparse LiDAR and updated at sensor rate as the platform moves. Our GPU-based method evaluates surface points against precomputed tool-geometry kernels across rotated approach orientations, underpinned by a scan-centric TSDF integration scheme suited to non-repetitive sensors such as the Livox Mid-360. The system is tool-agnostic, requires no prior scene model, and runs in real time on both workstation and Jetson Orin edge hardware. On synthetic primitives, our method achieves F1=90.8%, against 69.8% for a Hidden Point Removal baseline; ablations within our own pipeline give 81.5% replacing the TSDF query with a point-cloud collision check, and 33.9% replacing scan-centric integration with projective, nvblox-style integration. On a mature synthetic Pinus radiata model, the method labels 56.8% of visible pine branch surfaces as physically inaccessible.
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