Evaluation of Lidar-based 3D SLAM algorithms in SubT environment

Abstract

Autonomous navigation of robots in harsh and GPS denied subterranean (SubT) environments with lack of natural or poor illumination is a challenging task that fosters the development of algorithms for pose estimation and mapping. Inspired by the need for real-life deployment of autonomous robots in such environments, this article presents an experimental comparative study of 3D SLAM algorithms. The study focuses on state-of-the-art Lidar SLAM algorithms with open-source implementation that are i) lidar-only like BLAM, LOAM, A-LOAM, ISC-LOAM and hdl graph slam, or ii) lidar-inertial like LeGO-LOAM, Cartographer, LIO-mapping and LIO-SAM. The evaluation of the methods is performed based on a dataset collected from the Boston Dynamics Spot robot equipped with 3D lidar Velodyne Puck Lite and IMU Vectornav VN-100, during a mission in an underground tunnel. In the evaluation process poses and 3D tunnel reconstructions from SLAM algorithms are compared against each other to find methods with most solid performance in terms of pose accuracy and map quality.