Vibration-Aware Lidar-Inertial Odometry Provides Accurate Navigation in Challenging Environments

Strategic Insights -

Research conducted by the Huazhong University of Science and Technology has led to the development of a new method for addressing the issue of LiDAR scan distortions caused by high-speed ground robots moving on unstructured terrains. The study, published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, introduces post-undistortion uncertainty to improve the accuracy of lidar-inertial odometry (LIO) in challenging environments. The method uses point-to-map matching and iterated Kalman filter updates to account for the vibrations and IMU noise.

Key Takeaways:

  • The study identifies LiDAR scan distortions as a significant challenge in LIO, particularly in environments with high-frequency vibrations.
  • The proposed method, vibration-aware LIO, introduces post-undistortion uncertainty to address the issue of undistortion errors caused by linear and angular vibrations.
  • The method uses point-to-map matching and iterated Kalman filter updates to update the odometry states and account for vibrations and IMU noise.
  • The research was conducted on multiple public datasets and the authors' own recordings, demonstrating the method's performance and accuracy.
  • The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Interdisciplinary Research Program (Robotics and Artificial Intelligence) of HUST.
  • The research team consists of Bin Han, Yan Dong, Enci Xu, Shaoqiang Qiu, Wenxuan Li, and Yang Liu from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Statistics:

  • The study was published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol. 10, No. 9, 2025, pp. 8706-8713.
  • The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Interdisciplinary Research Program (Robotics and Artificial Intelligence) of HUST.
  • The authors conducted experiments on 5 public datasets and their own recordings, achieving better performance than other methods.
  • The study was conducted using a vibration-platform and mobile-platform experiment setup.

Sources:

  • Vibration-aware Lidar-inertial Odometry Based On Point-wise Post-undistortion Uncertainty. Ieee Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025;10(9):8706-8713.
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08855-4141, USA
  • Bin Han, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, State Key Lab Intelligent Mfg Equipment & Technol, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China.