SuperEx: Enhancing Indoor Mapping and Exploration using Non-Line-of-Sight Perception

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Garg, Kush, Dave, Akshat
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Garg, Kush
Dave, Akshat
author_facet Garg, Kush
Dave, Akshat
contents Efficient exploration and mapping in unknown indoor environments is a fundamental challenge, with high stakes in time-critical settings. In current systems, robot perception remains confined to line-of-sight; occluded regions remain unknown until physically traversed, leading to inefficient exploration when layouts deviate from prior assumptions. In this work, we bring non-line-of-sight (NLOS) sensing to robotic exploration. We leverage single-photon LiDARs, which capture time-of-flight histograms that encode the presence of hidden objects - allowing robots to look around blind corners. Recent single-photon LiDARs have become practical and portable, enabling deployment beyond controlled lab settings. Prior NLOS works target 3D reconstruction in static, lab-based scenarios, and initial efforts toward NLOS-aided navigation consider simplified geometries. We introduce SuperEx, a framework that integrates NLOS sensing directly into the mapping-exploration loop. SuperEx augments global map prediction with beyond-line-of-sight cues by (i) carving empty NLOS regions from timing histograms and (ii) reconstructing occupied structure via a two-step physics-based and data-driven approach that leverages structural regularities. Evaluations on complex simulated maps and the real-world KTH Floorplan dataset show a 12% gain in mapping accuracy under < 30% coverage and improved exploration efficiency compared to line-of-sight baselines, opening a path to reliable mapping beyond direct visibility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_10506
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SuperEx: Enhancing Indoor Mapping and Exploration using Non-Line-of-Sight Perception
Garg, Kush
Dave, Akshat
Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Efficient exploration and mapping in unknown indoor environments is a fundamental challenge, with high stakes in time-critical settings. In current systems, robot perception remains confined to line-of-sight; occluded regions remain unknown until physically traversed, leading to inefficient exploration when layouts deviate from prior assumptions. In this work, we bring non-line-of-sight (NLOS) sensing to robotic exploration. We leverage single-photon LiDARs, which capture time-of-flight histograms that encode the presence of hidden objects - allowing robots to look around blind corners. Recent single-photon LiDARs have become practical and portable, enabling deployment beyond controlled lab settings. Prior NLOS works target 3D reconstruction in static, lab-based scenarios, and initial efforts toward NLOS-aided navigation consider simplified geometries. We introduce SuperEx, a framework that integrates NLOS sensing directly into the mapping-exploration loop. SuperEx augments global map prediction with beyond-line-of-sight cues by (i) carving empty NLOS regions from timing histograms and (ii) reconstructing occupied structure via a two-step physics-based and data-driven approach that leverages structural regularities. Evaluations on complex simulated maps and the real-world KTH Floorplan dataset show a 12% gain in mapping accuracy under < 30% coverage and improved exploration efficiency compared to line-of-sight baselines, opening a path to reliable mapping beyond direct visibility.
title SuperEx: Enhancing Indoor Mapping and Exploration using Non-Line-of-Sight Perception
topic Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10506