# PWCLO-Net: Deep LiDAR Odometry in 3D Point Clouds Using Hierarchical Embedding Mask Optimization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.00972 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00972/

## Key facts

- Cited by 35 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Dec 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [NeRF-LOAM: Neural Implicit Representation for Large-Scale Incremental LiDAR Odometry and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10709/) (2023)
- [RegFormer: An Efficient Projection-Aware Transformer Network for Large-Scale Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12384/) (2023)
- [What Matters for 3D Scene Flow Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09143/) (2022)
- [DVLO: Deep Visual-LiDAR Odometry with Local-to-Global Feature Fusion and Bi-Directional Structure Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18274/) (2024)
- [Efficient 3D Deep LiDAR Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02135/) (2021)
- [Advancements in Point Cloud Data Augmentation for Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12113/) (2023)
- [Auxiliary Tasks Benefit 3D Skeleton-based Human Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08942/) (2023)
- [Residual 3D Scene Flow Learning with Context-Aware Feature Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04685/) (2021)
- [Multi-Pair Temporal Sentence Grounding via Multi-Thread Knowledge Transfer Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15678/) (2024)
- [DELFlow: Dense Efficient Learning of Scene Flow for Large-Scale Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04383/) (2023)
- [3D Hierarchical Refinement and Augmentation for Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Pose from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03045/) (2021)
- [4DRVO-Net: Deep 4D Radar-Visual Odometry Using Multi-Modal and Multi-Scale Adaptive Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06573/) (2023)
- [End-to-end 2D-3D Registration between Image and LiDAR Point Cloud for Vehicle Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11346/) (2023)
- [DELO: Deep Evidential LiDAR Odometry using Partial Optimal Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07153/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Learning of 3D Scene Flow from Monocular Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03673/) (2022)
- [Attention Models for Point Clouds in Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10788/) (2021)
- [Splat-LOAM: Gaussian Splatting LiDAR Odometry and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17491/) (2025)
- [RLSAC: Reinforcement Learning enhanced Sample Consensus for End-to-End Robust Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05318/) (2023)
- [HDMNet: A Hierarchical Matching Network with Double Attention for Large-scale Outdoor LiDAR Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18874/) (2023)
- [DSLO: Deep Sequence LiDAR Odometry Based on Inconsistent Spatio-temporal Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00744/) (2024)
- [DVLO4D: Deep Visual-Lidar Odometry with Sparse Spatial-temporal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06023/) (2025)
- [RegFormer++: An Efficient Large-Scale 3D LiDAR Point Registration Network with Projection-Aware 2D Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14290/) (2026)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR for Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01567/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Learning of 3D Scene Flow with 3D Odometry Assistance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04945/) (2022)
- [UnPWC-SVDLO: Multi-SVD on PointPWC for Unsupervised Lidar Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.08150/) (2022)
- [Attention-Guided Lidar Segmentation and Odometry Using Image-to-Point Cloud Saliency Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14332/) (2023)
- [Neural Implicit Representation for Highly Dynamic LiDAR Mapping and Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17729/) (2024)
- [DNOI-4DRO: Deep 4D Radar Odometry with Differentiable Neural-Optimization Iterations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12310/) (2025)
- [Deep Planar Parallax for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03178/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A novel 3D point cloud learning model for deep LiDAR odometry, named PWCLO-Net, using hierarchical embedding mask optimization is proposed in this paper. In this model, the Pyramid, Warping, and Cost volume (PWC) structure for the LiDAR odometry task is built to refine the estimated pose in a coarse-to-fine approach hierarchically. An attentive cost volume is built to associate two point clouds and obtain embedding motion patterns. Then, a novel trainable embedding mask is proposed to weigh the local motion patterns of all points to regress the overall pose and filter outlier points. The estimated current pose is used to warp the first point cloud to bridge the distance to the second point cloud, and then the cost volume of the residual motion is built. At the same time, the embedding mask is optimized hierarchically from coarse to fine to obtain more accurate filtering information for pose refinement. The trainable pose warp-refinement process is iteratively used to make the pose estimation more robust for outliers. The superior performance and effectiveness of our LiDAR odometry model are demonstrated on KITTI odometry dataset. Our method outperforms all recent learning-based methods and outperforms the geometry-based approach, LOAM with mapping optimization, on most sequences of KITTI odometry dataset.Our source codes will be released on https://github.com/IRMVLab/PWCLONet.