# RTAB-Map as an Open-Source Lidar and Visual SLAM Library for Large-Scale and Long-Term Online Operation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.06341 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06341/

## Key facts

- Cited by 62 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Mar 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 62)

- [Closed-Loop Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation with GPT-4V](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10220/) (2024)
- [SPIN: Simultaneous Perception, Interaction and Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07991/) (2024)
- [General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04812/) (2024)
- [HGS-Mapping: Online Dense Mapping Using Hybrid Gaussian Representation in Urban Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20159/) (2024)
- [AgentVLN: Towards Agentic Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17670/) (2026)
- [ASHiTA: Automatic Scene-grounded HIerarchical Task Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06553/) (2025)
- [Ego3DT: Tracking Every 3D Object in Ego-centric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08530/) (2024)
- [Multi-Session SLAM with Differentiable Wide-Baseline Pose Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15263/) (2024)
- [Light-SLAM: A Robust Deep-Learning Visual SLAM System Based on LightGlue under Challenging Lighting Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02382/) (2024)
- [UMAD: University of Macau Anomaly Detection Benchmark Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12527/) (2024)
- [Zero-shot Object-Centric Instruction Following: Integrating Foundation Models with Traditional Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07848/) (2024)
- [CuriousBot: Interactive Mobile Exploration via Actionable 3D Relational Object Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13338/) (2025)
- [Reasoning in visual navigation of end-to-end trained agents: a dynamical systems approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08306/) (2025)
- [RetailOpt: Opt-In, Easy-to-Deploy Trajectory Estimation from Smartphone Motion Data and Retail Facility Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12548/) (2024)
- [GeoFlow-SLAM: A Robust Tightly-Coupled RGBD-Inertial and Legged Odometry Fusion SLAM for Dynamic Legged Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14247/) (2025)
- [Changes in Real Time: Online Scene Change Detection with Multi-View Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12370/) (2025)
- [PRISM-TopoMap: Online Topological Mapping with Place Recognition and Scan Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01674/) (2024)
- [Open-Set 3D Semantic Instance Maps for Vision Language Navigation -- O3D-SIM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17922/) (2024)
- [PUGS: Perceptual Uncertainty for Grasp Selection in Underwater Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09824/) (2025)
- [From Gaming to Research: GTA V for Synthetic Data Generation for Robotics and Navigations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12303/) (2025)
- [RANa: Retrieval-Augmented Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03524/) (2025)
- [Robust Localization, Mapping, and Navigation for Quadruped Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02272/) (2025)
- [Egocentric Action-aware Inertial Localization in Point Clouds with Vision-Language Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14346/) (2025)
- [What does really matter in image goal navigation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01667/) (2025)
- [Kinaema: a recurrent sequence model for memory and pose in motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20261/) (2025)
- [Offload or Overload: A Platform Measurement Study of Mobile Robotic Manipulation Workloads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18284/) (2026)
- [Socially Pertinent Robots in Gerontological Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07560/) (2024)
- [SPACE: 3D Spatial Co-operation and Exploration Framework for Robust Mapping and Coverage with Multi-Robot Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02524/) (2024)
- [Self-supervised cost of transport estimation for multimodal path planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06101/) (2024)
- [NOVA: Navigation via Object-Centric Visual Autonomy for High-Speed Target Tracking in Unstructured GPS-Denied Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18689/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Distributed as an open source library since 2013, RTAB-Map started as an appearance-based loop closure detection approach with memory management to deal with large-scale and long-term online operation. It then grew to implement Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) on various robots and mobile platforms. As each application brings its own set of contraints on sensors, processing capabilities and locomotion, it raises the question of which SLAM approach is the most appropriate to use in terms of cost, accuracy, computation power and ease of integration. Since most of SLAM approaches are either visual or lidar-based, comparison is difficult. Therefore, we decided to extend RTAB-Map to support both visual and lidar SLAM, providing in one package a tool allowing users to implement and compare a variety of 3D and 2D solutions for a wide range of applications with different robots and sensors. This paper presents this extended version of RTAB-Map and its use in comparing, both quantitatively and qualitatively, a large selection of popular real-world datasets (e.g., KITTI, EuRoC, TUM RGB-D, MIT Stata Center on PR2 robot), outlining strengths and limitations of visual and lidar SLAM configurations from a practical perspective for autonomous navigation applications.