Analysis of the Utility of Inertial Measurements for 3D LiDAR Odometry and Mapping

Sammanfattning

Combining inertial measurements with LiDAR measurements for odometry and mapping is ubiquitous, but low-cost inertial measurement units are often noisy sensors, and it is suspected that naive integration of the measurements will result in deteriorated performance. The project explores under which circumstances integration of inertial measurements is beneficial for the robustness and accuracy of LiDAR odometry and mapping. It is already known that inertial measurements have the potential to improve performance, but when and how are rarely the main topics of study in existing literature. This project analyzes one way inertial measurements are used to compensate for motion while registering points from a spinning LiDAR, and compares this to a similar method that does not use inertial measurements. It is found that integration of inertial measurements is beneficial in cases of fast rotations of the sensor and that in other cases, it does not make a significant difference. The results can be explained with existing theory, and hence provide confidence in the theory for predicting behavior in similar systems.