Have you worked with a SICK rangefinder? Have you used it to get reflectivity data from its scans? If so, please read this!
My lab has a SICK LMS200-30106. The manual states in section 4.1.7 that we should be able to change the operating mode of the scanner to include reflectivity data (using the BM_TGM telegram and mode 0x2B). It also states that responses are formatted as described in 4.2.46 (MWREM_TGM telegram, code 0xF5)--in short, two bytes give the distance value for that angle and another 2 bytes give the reflectivity.
I can successfully set the SICK to return MWREM_TGM packets, but they all look something like this (Hope the formatting turns out ok):
2 80 de 2 f5 1 0 1 0 b5 0 b5 40
ad 1b 0 0 ac 1b 0 0 a9 8 0 0 a0 8 0 0 10 d2 6
...basically, the data portion of the scan gives 181 angle measurements (as I expected) where in each case the second 2 bytes of each angle measurement (the reflectivity portion) is zero. I get scans like this no matter what I do--I've put retroreflective strips, shiny metal, whatever--the reflectivity bytes are ALWAYS zero.
So am I doing something wrong? Am I mis-reading the MWREM_TGM packet format? Something else? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks,
Ed Clarkson Georgia Tech Mobile Robot Lab