pcl::NormalEstimation setSearchMethod explanation - point-cloud-library

Question

// Compute the normals
pcl::NormalEstimation<pcl::PointXYZ, pcl::Normal> normalEstimation;
pcl::search::KdTree<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr tree(new pcl::search::KdTree<pcl::PointXYZ>);
normalEstimation.setInputCloud(source_cloud);
normalEstimation.setSearchMethod(tree);
Hello everyone,
I am beginner for learning PCL
I don't understand at "normalEstimation.setSearchMethod(tree);"
what does this part mean?
Does it mean there are some methods that we have to choose?
Sometimes I see the code is like this
// Normal estimation
pcl::NormalEstimation<pcl::PointXYZ, pcl::Normal> n;
pcl::search::KdTree<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr tree(new pcl::search::KdTree<pcl::PointXYZ>);
tree->setInputCloud(cloud_smoothed)*/; [this part I dont understand too]
n.setInputCloud(cloud_smoothed);
n.setSearchMethod(tree);
Thankyou guys
cheers

Answer 1

you can find some information on how normals are computed here: http://pointclouds.org/documentation/tutorials/normal_estimation.php.
Basically, to compute a normal at a specific point, you need to "analyze" its neighbourhood, so the points that are around it. Usually, you take either the N closest points or all the points that are within a certain radius around the target point.
Finding these neighbour points is not trivial if the pointcloud is completely unstructured. KD-trees are here to speedup this search. In fact, they are an optimized data structure which allows very fast nearest-neighbour search for example. You can find more information on KD-trees here http://pointclouds.org/documentation/tutorials/kdtree_search.php.
So, the line normalEstimation.setSearchMethod(tree); just sets an empty KD-tree that will be used by the normal estimation algorithm.