A Unified 3D Mapping Framework using a 3D or 2D LiDAR

Abstract: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has been considered as a solved problem thanks to the progress made in the past few years. However, the great majority of LiDAR-based SLAM algorithms are designed for a specific type of payload and therefore don't generalize across different platforms. In practice, this drawback causes the development, deployment and maintenance of an algorithm difficult. Consequently, our work focuses on improving the compatibility across different sensing payloads. Specifically, we extend the Cartographer SLAM library to handle different types of LiDAR including fixed or rotating, 2D or 3D LiDARs. By replacing the localization module of Cartographer and maintaining the sparse pose graph (SPG), the proposed framework can create high-quality 3D maps in real-time on different sensing payloads. Additionally, it brings the benefit of simplicity with only a few parameters need to be adjusted for each sensor type.