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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kurda, Aaron, Steuernagel, Simon, Baum, Marcus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21293
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author Kurda, Aaron
Steuernagel, Simon
Baum, Marcus
author_facet Kurda, Aaron
Steuernagel, Simon
Baum, Marcus
contents Lidar-only odometry aims to estimate the trajectory of a mobile platform from a stream of lidar scans. Traditional scan-to map approaches register each scan against a single, evolving map, which propagates registration errors over time. To mitigate this, we propose a multitude-of-maps approach where the current scan is registered against multiple overlapping submaps instead of a single static map. By optimizing the resulting constraints in a pose graph, our method enables not only precise estimation of the current pose but also retrospective refinement of the submaps' anchor points, which improves short-term consistency and long-term accuracy. We demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive and often superior accuracy on a variety of automotive datasets while maintaining real-time performance. Ablation studies confirm the critical role of multiple registrations and retrospective refinement of the map as core factors for our accuracy gains. Code and raw results are available on our public GitHub at https://github.com/Fusion-Goettingen/IROS_2026_Kurda_Graph.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_21293
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Graph-based Online Lidar Odometry with Retrospective Map Refinement
Kurda, Aaron
Steuernagel, Simon
Baum, Marcus
Robotics
Lidar-only odometry aims to estimate the trajectory of a mobile platform from a stream of lidar scans. Traditional scan-to map approaches register each scan against a single, evolving map, which propagates registration errors over time. To mitigate this, we propose a multitude-of-maps approach where the current scan is registered against multiple overlapping submaps instead of a single static map. By optimizing the resulting constraints in a pose graph, our method enables not only precise estimation of the current pose but also retrospective refinement of the submaps' anchor points, which improves short-term consistency and long-term accuracy. We demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive and often superior accuracy on a variety of automotive datasets while maintaining real-time performance. Ablation studies confirm the critical role of multiple registrations and retrospective refinement of the map as core factors for our accuracy gains. Code and raw results are available on our public GitHub at https://github.com/Fusion-Goettingen/IROS_2026_Kurda_Graph.
title Graph-based Online Lidar Odometry with Retrospective Map Refinement
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21293