2025/07/21 by Easton Potokar, Michael Kaess, Potokar, Easton +1 · 2 citations
Engineering · Environmental Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications #Robotics (cs.RO) #Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.16000
openalex publication_date 2025/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors have become the sensor of choice for many robotic state estimation tasks. Because of this, in recent years there has been significant work done to fine the most accurate method to perform state estimation using these sensors. In each of these prior works, an explosion of possible technique combinations has occurred, with each work comparing LiDAR Odometry (LO) "pipelines" to prior "pipelines". Unfortunately, little work up to this point has performed the significant amount of ablation studies comparing the various building-blocks of a LO pipeline. In this work, we summarize the various techniques that go into defining a LO pipeline and empirically evaluate these LO components on an expansive number of datasets across environments, LiDAR types, and vehicle motions. Finally, we make empirically-backed recommendations for the design of future LO pipelines to provide the most accurate and reliable performance.