The basic data type in PCL is a PointCloud.

A Point Cloud is a templated C++ class which contains the following data fields

• width (int) specifies the width of the point cloud dataset in the number of points.
  • the total number of points in the cloud (equal with the number of elements in points) for unorganized datasets.
  • the width (total number of points in a row) of an organized point cloud dataset.
• height (int) specifies the height of the point cloud dataset in the number of points.
  • set to 1 for unorganized point clouds
  • the height (total number of rows) of an organized point cloud dataaset
• points (std::vector<PointT>) contains the data array where all the points of type PointT are stored.
• is_dense (bool) specifies if all data in points is finite (true) or whether the XYZ values of certain points might contain Inf or NaN value (false)
• sensor_origin_ (Eigen::Vector4f) specifies the sensor acquisition pose (origin or translation). This member is usually optional, and not used by the majority of the algorithms in PCL.
• sensor_orientation_ (Eigen::Quanternionf) specifies the sensor acquisition pose (orientation). This member is usually optional, and not used by the majority of the algorithms in PCL.

Point Types

• PointXYZ- float x, y, z
• PointXYZI- float x, y, z, intensity
• PointXYZRGB- float x, y, z, rgb
• PointXYZRGBA- float x, y, z, uint32_t rgba
• Normal- float normal[3], curvature
• PointNormal- float x, y, z, normal[3], curvature
• Histogram- float historam[N]
• and many more.