A Low-Drift LiDAR-based Odometry for Subterranean Areas

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Abstract

This paper proposes a low-drift LiDAR-based odometry estimation for navigating robots in a subterranean environment. Due to the limitations of subterranean areas, sensors like Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and cameras are limited in use. An alternative data source that can be used in subterranean areas is LiDAR. Due to lack of global information and measurement noise, pose estimation based on LiDAR is subject to drift. In this work, we introduce a solution to reduce LiDAR odometry drift. LiDAR odometry estimates the robot's pose by matching subsequent point clouds. Due to the lack of an absolute measurement system, the pose estimation has a cumulative error. A slight drift in the attitude estimation causes a massive error in the overall pose estimation. The proposed method tackles this problem with a filter for redundant information caused by flat ground and utilizes an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to provide reliable information on the robot's attitude and fuses it with an Extended Kalman filter (EKF). The proposed method was tested on a dataset recorded in a highway tunnel and compared to state-of-the-art approaches. The final results outperform the state-of-the-art solutions in pose estimation in a subterranean environment.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Austrian Robotics Workshop 2022
Subtitle of host publicationRobotics for Assistance and in Healthcare
Pages17-22
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-99076-109-0
Publication statusPublished - 2022
EventAustrian Robotics Workshop 2022: ARW 2022 - Villach, Austria
Duration: 14 Jun 202215 Jun 2022

Conference

ConferenceAustrian Robotics Workshop 2022
Abbreviated titleARW 2022
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVillach
Period14/06/2215/06/22

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