# GS-LIVO: Real-Time LiDAR, Inertial, and Visual Multi-sensor Fused Odometry with Gaussian Mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08672 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08672/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [VINS-Mono: A Robust and Versatile Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03852/) (2017)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [Octree-GS: Towards Consistent Real-time Rendering with LOD-Structured 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17898/) (2024)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [Co-SLAM: Joint Coordinate and Sparse Parametric Encodings for Neural Real-Time SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14377/) (2023)
- [FAST-LIO2: Fast Direct LiDAR-inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06829/) (2021)
- [textitS3Gaussian: Self-Supervised Street Gaussians for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20323/) (2024)
- [Orbeez-SLAM: A Real-time Monocular Visual SLAM with ORB Features and NeRF-realized Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13274/) (2022)
- [FAST-LIO: A Fast, Robust LiDAR-inertial Odometry Package by Tightly-Coupled Iterated Kalman Filter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08196/) (2020)
- [R3LIVE: A Robust, Real-time, RGB-colored, LiDAR-Inertial-Visual tightly-coupled state Estimation and mapping package](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07982/) (2021)
- [LVI-SAM: Tightly-coupled Lidar-Visual-Inertial Odometry via Smoothing and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10831/) (2021)
- [FAST-LIVO2: Fast, Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14035/) (2024)
- [SurfelNeRF: Neural Surfel Radiance Fields for Online Photorealistic Reconstruction of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08971/) (2023)
- [The Oxford Spires Dataset: Benchmarking Large-Scale LiDAR-Visual Localisation, Reconstruction and Radiance Field Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10546/) (2024)
- [LetsGo: Large-Scale Garage Modeling and Rendering via LiDAR-Assisted Gaussian Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09748/) (2024)
- [FAST-LIVO: Fast and Tightly-coupled Sparse-Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00893/) (2022)
- [H2-Mapping: Real-time Dense Mapping Using Hierarchical Hybrid Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03207/) (2023)
- [LI-GS: Gaussian Splatting with LiDAR Incorporated for Accurate Large-Scale Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12899/) (2024)
- [MM3DGS SLAM: Multi-modal 3D Gaussian Splatting for SLAM Using Vision, Depth, and Inertial Measurements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00923/) (2024)
- [Real-time Scalable Dense Surfel Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04250/) (2019)
- [LIC-Fusion: LiDAR-Inertial-Camera Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04102/) (2019)
- [UncLe-SLAM: Uncertainty Learning for Dense Neural SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11048/) (2023)
- [Gaussian-LIC: Real-Time Photo-Realistic SLAM with Gaussian Splatting and LiDAR-Inertial-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06926/) (2024)
- [LiV-GS: LiDAR-Vision Integration for 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM in Outdoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12185/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [LiDAR-VGGT: Cross-Modal Coarse-to-Fine Fusion for Globally Consistent and Metric-Scale Dense Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01186/) (2025)
- [SiLVR: Scalable Lidar-Visual Radiance Field Reconstruction with Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02657/) (2025)
- [ObjSplat: Geometry-Aware Gaussian Surfels for Active Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06997/) (2026)
- [Towards Next-Generation SLAM: A Survey on 3DGS-SLAM Focusing on Performance, Robustness, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04251/) (2026)
- [VBGS-SLAM: Variational Bayesian Gaussian Splatting Simultaneous Localization and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02696/) (2026)
- [MOGS: Monocular Object-guided Gaussian Splatting in Large Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06685/) (2025)
- [LVD-GS: Gaussian Splatting SLAM for Dynamic Scenes via Hierarchical Explicit-Implicit Representation Collaboration Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22669/) (2025)
- [Rad-GS: Radar-Vision Integration for 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM in Outdoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16091/) (2025)
- [MIRAGE: Metric Inference and Reliability-Aware Gaussian Estimation from Feed-Forward Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12568/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, 3D Gaussian splatting (3D-GS) has emerged as a novel scene representation approach. However, existing vision-only 3D-GS methods often rely on hand-crafted heuristics for point-cloud densification and face challenges in handling occlusions and high GPU memory and computation consumption. LiDAR-Inertial-Visual (LIV) sensor configuration has demonstrated superior performance in localization and dense mapping by leveraging complementary sensing characteristics: rich texture information from cameras, precise geometric measurements from LiDAR, and high-frequency motion data from IMU. Inspired by this, we propose a novel real-time Gaussian-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system. Our map system comprises a global Gaussian map and a sliding window of Gaussians, along with an IESKF-based odometry. The global Gaussian map consists of hash-indexed voxels organized in a recursive octree, effectively covering sparse spatial volumes while adapting to different levels of detail and scales. The Gaussian map is initialized through multi-sensor fusion and optimized with photometric gradients. Our system incrementally maintains a sliding window of Gaussians, significantly reducing GPU computation and memory consumption by only optimizing the map within the sliding window. Moreover, we implement a tightly coupled multi-sensor fusion odometry with an iterative error state Kalman filter (IESKF), leveraging real-time updating and rendering of the Gaussian map. Our system represents the first real-time Gaussian-based SLAM framework deployable on resource-constrained embedded systems, demonstrated on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX platform. The framework achieves real-time performance while maintaining robust multi-sensor fusion capabilities. All implementation algorithms, hardware designs, and CAD models will be publicly available.