# LIO-SAM: Tightly-coupled Lidar Inertial Odometry via Smoothing and Mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.00258 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00258/

## Key facts

- Cited by 188 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jul 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 188)

- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [MapTRv2: An End-to-End Framework for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05736/) (2023)
- [BEVerse: Unified Perception and Prediction in Birds-Eye-View for Vision-Centric Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09743/) (2022)
- [PersFormer: 3D Lane Detection via Perspective Transformer and the OpenLane Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11089/) (2022)
- [Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08782/) (2023)
- [PivotNet: Vectorized Pivot Learning for End-to-end HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16477/) (2023)
- [End-to-End Vectorized HD-map Construction with Piecewise Bezier Curve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09700/) (2023)
- [MapTracker: Tracking with Strided Memory Fusion for Consistent Vector HD Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15951/) (2024)
- [LCDNet: Deep Loop Closure Detection and Point Cloud Registration for LiDAR SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05056/) (2021)
- [RGBD GS-ICP SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12550/) (2024)
- [NeRF2: Neural Radio-Frequency Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06118/) (2023)
- [Online Map Vectorization for Autonomous Driving: A Rasterization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10502/) (2023)
- [MGMap: Mask-Guided Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00876/) (2024)
- [SLOPER4D: A Scene-Aware Dataset for Global 4D Human Pose Estimation in Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09095/) (2023)
- [VECtor: A Versatile Event-Centric Benchmark for Multi-Sensor SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01404/) (2022)
- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [HSC4D: Human-centered 4D Scene Capture in Large-scale Indoor-outdoor Space Using Wearable IMUs and LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09215/) (2022)
- [Receding Moving Object Segmentation in 3D LiDAR Data Using Sparse 4D Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04129/) (2022)
- [NeBula: Quest for Robotic Autonomy in Challenging Environments; TEAM CoSTAR at the DARPA Subterranean Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11470/) (2021)
- [Complementing Onboard Sensors with Satellite Map: A New Perspective for HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15427/) (2023)
- [The Oxford Spires Dataset: Benchmarking Large-Scale LiDAR-Visual Localisation, Reconstruction and Radiance Field Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10546/) (2024)
- [MULLS: Versatile LiDAR SLAM via Multi-metric Linear Least Square](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03771/) (2021)
- [Learning Off-Road Terrain Traversability with Self-Supervisions Only](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18896/) (2023)
- [Mask2Map: Vectorized HD Map Construction Using Bird's Eye View Segmentation Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13517/) (2024)
- [VILENS: Visual, Inertial, Lidar, and Leg Odometry for All-Terrain Legged Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07243/) (2021)
- [M2DGR: A Multi-sensor and Multi-scenario SLAM Dataset for Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13659/) (2021)
- [HypLiLoc: Towards Effective LiDAR Pose Regression with Hyperbolic Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00932/) (2023)
- [Self-Supervised Traversability Prediction by Learning to Reconstruct Safe Terrain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01329/) (2022)
- [OpenGraph: Open-Vocabulary Hierarchical 3D Graph Representation in Large-Scale Outdoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09412/) (2024)
- [Situational Graphs for Robot Navigation in Structured Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12197/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a framework for tightly-coupled lidar inertial odometry via smoothing and mapping, LIO-SAM, that achieves highly accurate, real-time mobile robot trajectory estimation and map-building. LIO-SAM formulates lidar-inertial odometry atop a factor graph, allowing a multitude of relative and absolute measurements, including loop closures, to be incorporated from different sources as factors into the system. The estimated motion from inertial measurement unit (IMU) pre-integration de-skews point clouds and produces an initial guess for lidar odometry optimization. The obtained lidar odometry solution is used to estimate the bias of the IMU. To ensure high performance in real-time, we marginalize old lidar scans for pose optimization, rather than matching lidar scans to a global map. Scan-matching at a local scale instead of a global scale significantly improves the real-time performance of the system, as does the selective introduction of keyframes, and an efficient sliding window approach that registers a new keyframe to a fixed-size set of prior ``sub-keyframes.'' The proposed method is extensively evaluated on datasets gathered from three platforms over various scales and environments.
