Efficient Dynamic LiDAR Odometry for Mobile Robots with Structured Point Clouds

We propose a real-time dynamic LiDAR odometry pipeline for mobile robots in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) scenarios. Existing approaches to dynamic object detection often rely on pretrained learned networks or computationally expensive volumetric maps. To enhance efficiency on computationally limited robots, we reuse data between the odometry and detection module. Utilizing a range image segmentation technique and a novel residual-based heuristic, our method distinguishes dynamic from static objects before integrating them into the point cloud map. The approach demonstrates robust object tracking and improved map accuracy in environments with numerous dynamic objects. Even highly non-rigid objects, such as running humans, are accurately detected at point level without prior downsampling of the point cloud and hence, without loss of information. Evaluation on simulated and real-world data validates its computational efficiency. Compared to a stateof-the-art volumetric method, our approach shows comparable detection performance at a fraction of the processing time, adding only 14 ms to the odometry module for dynamic object detection and tracking. The implementation and a new realworld dataset are available as open-source for further research.

Authors

• Jonathan Lichtenfeld
• Kevin Daun
• Oskar von Stryk

Keywords

• Point cloud compression
• Laser radar
• Pipelines
• Object detection
• Real-time systems
• Computational efficiency
• Odometry
• Mobile robots
• Object tracking
• Intelligent robots
• Point Cloud
• Light Detection And Ranging
• Mobile Robot
• Processing Time
• Image Segmentation
• Real-world Data
• Detection Module
• Computational Expense
• Static Objects
• Dynamic Objects
• Time Step
• Recent Data
• Public Datasets
• Intersection Over Union
• Bounding Box
• Kalman Filter
• Global Map
• Tracking Performance
• Simultaneous Localization And Mapping
• Random Sample Consensus
• Public Benchmark
• Dynamic Point
• Motion Model
• Nearest Neighbor Search
• Residual Norm
• Volumetric Approach
• Traffic Light
• Robots In Environments