Obstacle detection using LiDAR

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Hi, I am trying to do obstacle detection using VLP16 but am not getting help from anywhere. Can anyone please tell me how to do that or even how to calculate the distance between obstacle and Lidar will work. When i do "rostopic echo /velodyne_points" i get a huge array of numbers. Can anyone tell what it is and how it can be used to calculate the distance between obstacle and Lidar. I am coding in python. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

This is the result of the command: "rostopic echo /velodyne_points"

rostopic echo /velodyne_points header: seq: 628 stamp: secs: 35448 nsecs: 930000000 frame_id: "velodyne" height: 1 width: 24858 fields:

name: "x"
offset: 0
datatype: 7
count: 1

name: "y"
offset: 4
datatype: 7
count: 1

name: "z"
offset: 8
datatype: 7
count: 1

name: "intensity"
offset: 16
datatype: 7
count: 1

name: "ring"
offset: 20
datatype: 4
count: 1

is_bigendian: False point_step: 32 row_step: 795456 data: [237, 75, 185, 192, 192, 75, 31, 188, 170, 153, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 143, 159, 185, 192, 94, 29, 239, 188, 224, 243, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 37, 150, 185, 192, 11, 47, 71, 189, 238, 234, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 190, 216, 185, 192, 86, 157, 139, 189, 8, 52, 199, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 163, 223, 185, 192, 224, 134, 179, 189, 184, 61, 199, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 65, 148, 185, 192, 71, 19, 219, 189, 198, 239, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 37, 125, 185, 192, 193, 100, 1, 190, 112, 218, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 96, 73, 185, 192, 150, 36, 21, 190, 240, 166, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 189, 241, 185, 192, 252, 162, 41, 190, 10, 96, 199, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 120, 193, 185, 192, 159, 105, 61, 190, 113, 49, 199, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 178, 109, 185, 192, 247, 254, 80, 190, 86, 221, 198, 191, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ... (more)