# Large-Scale LiDAR Consistent Mapping using Hierachical LiDAR Bundle Adjustment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.11939 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11939/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Sep 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13255/) (2024)
- [PIN-SLAM: LiDAR SLAM Using a Point-Based Implicit Neural Representation for Achieving Global Map Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09101/) (2024)
- [The Oxford Spires Dataset: Benchmarking Large-Scale LiDAR-Visual Localisation, Reconstruction and Radiance Field Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10546/) (2024)
- [MM-Gaussian: 3D Gaussian-based Multi-modal Fusion for Localization and Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04026/) (2024)
- [Calibrated Keyframe-Segment Selection for Descriptor-Agnostic LiDAR Loop Closure in Repetitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09447/) (2025)
- [Accelerating Large-scale Bundle Adjustment for LiDAR Mapping via Parallel Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14266/) (2026)
- [MIRAGE: Metric Inference and Reliability-Aware Gaussian Estimation from Feed-Forward Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12568/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reconstructing an accurate and consistent large-scale LiDAR point cloud map is crucial for robotics applications. The existing solution, pose graph optimization, though it is time-efficient, does not directly optimize the mapping consistency. LiDAR bundle adjustment (BA) has been recently proposed to resolve this issue; however, it is too time-consuming on large-scale maps. To mitigate this problem, this paper presents a globally consistent and efficient mapping method suitable for large-scale maps. Our proposed work consists of a bottom-up hierarchical BA and a top-down pose graph optimization, which combines the advantages of both methods. With the hierarchical design, we solve multiple BA problems with a much smaller Hessian matrix size than the original BA; with the pose graph optimization, we smoothly and efficiently update the LiDAR poses. The effectiveness and robustness of our proposed approach have been validated on multiple spatially and timely large-scale public spinning LiDAR datasets, i.e., KITTI, MulRan and Newer College, and self-collected solid-state LiDAR datasets under structured and unstructured scenes. With proper setups, we demonstrate our work could generate a globally consistent map with around 12% of the sequence time.