ImLPR: Image-based LiDAR Place Recognition using Vision Foundation Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jung, Minwoo, Fu, Lanke Frank Tarimo, Fallon, Maurice, Kim, Ayoung
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912526623571968
author Jung, Minwoo
Fu, Lanke Frank Tarimo
Fallon, Maurice
Kim, Ayoung
author_facet Jung, Minwoo
Fu, Lanke Frank Tarimo
Fallon, Maurice
Kim, Ayoung
contents LiDAR Place Recognition (LPR) is a key component in robotic localization, enabling robots to align current scans with prior maps of their environment. While Visual Place Recognition (VPR) has embraced Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) to enhance descriptor robustness, LPR has relied on task-specific models with limited use of pre-trained foundation-level knowledge. This is due to the lack of 3D foundation models and the challenges of using VFM with LiDAR point clouds. To tackle this, we introduce ImLPR, a novel pipeline that employs a pre-trained DINOv2 VFM to generate rich descriptors for LPR. To the best of our knowledge, ImLPR is the first method to utilize a VFM for LPR while retaining the majority of pre-trained knowledge. ImLPR converts raw point clouds into novel three-channel Range Image Views (RIV) to leverage VFM in the LiDAR domain. It employs MultiConv adapters and Patch-InfoNCE loss for effective feature learning. We validate ImLPR on public datasets and outperform state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods across multiple evaluation metrics in both intra- and inter-session LPR. Comprehensive ablations on key design choices such as channel composition, RIV, adapters, and the patch-level loss quantify each component's impact. We release ImLPR as open source for the robotics community: https://github.com/minwoo0611/ImLPR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18364
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ImLPR: Image-based LiDAR Place Recognition using Vision Foundation Models
Jung, Minwoo
Fu, Lanke Frank Tarimo
Fallon, Maurice
Kim, Ayoung
Robotics
LiDAR Place Recognition (LPR) is a key component in robotic localization, enabling robots to align current scans with prior maps of their environment. While Visual Place Recognition (VPR) has embraced Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) to enhance descriptor robustness, LPR has relied on task-specific models with limited use of pre-trained foundation-level knowledge. This is due to the lack of 3D foundation models and the challenges of using VFM with LiDAR point clouds. To tackle this, we introduce ImLPR, a novel pipeline that employs a pre-trained DINOv2 VFM to generate rich descriptors for LPR. To the best of our knowledge, ImLPR is the first method to utilize a VFM for LPR while retaining the majority of pre-trained knowledge. ImLPR converts raw point clouds into novel three-channel Range Image Views (RIV) to leverage VFM in the LiDAR domain. It employs MultiConv adapters and Patch-InfoNCE loss for effective feature learning. We validate ImLPR on public datasets and outperform state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods across multiple evaluation metrics in both intra- and inter-session LPR. Comprehensive ablations on key design choices such as channel composition, RIV, adapters, and the patch-level loss quantify each component's impact. We release ImLPR as open source for the robotics community: https://github.com/minwoo0611/ImLPR.
title ImLPR: Image-based LiDAR Place Recognition using Vision Foundation Models
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18364