# Temporal-Aware Fusion for Robust Outdoor LiDAR Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36432 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36432/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [PREDATOR: Registration of 3D Point Clouds with Low Overlap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13005/) (2020)
- [PointNetVLAD: Deep Point Cloud Based Retrieval for Large-Scale Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03492/) (2018)
- [SpinNet: Learning a General Surface Descriptor for 3D Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12149/) (2020)
- [The Oxford Radar RobotCar Dataset: A Radar Extension to the Oxford RobotCar Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01300/) (2019)
- [Spherical Transformer for LiDAR-based 3D Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12766/) (2023)
- [MinkLoc3D: Point Cloud Based Large-Scale Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04530/) (2020)
- [Reloc3r: Large-Scale Training of Relative Camera Pose Regression for Generalizable, Fast, and Accurate Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08376/) (2024)
- [Scan Context++: Structural Place Recognition Robust to Rotation and Lateral Variations in Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13494/) (2021)
- [OverlapTransformer: An Efficient and Rotation-Invariant Transformer Network for LiDAR-Based Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03397/) (2022)
- [LCDNet: Deep Loop Closure Detection and Point Cloud Registration for LiDAR SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05056/) (2021)
- [VLocNet++: Deep Multitask Learning for Semantic Visual Localization and Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08366/) (2018)
- [Deep Auxiliary Learning for Visual Localization and Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03642/) (2018)
- [VidLoc: A Deep Spatio-Temporal Model for 6-DoF Video-Clip Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.06521/) (2017)
- [KFNet: Learning Temporal Camera Relocalization using Kalman Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10629/) (2020)
- [Map-Relative Pose Regression for Visual Re-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09884/) (2024)
- [BEVPlace: Learning LiDAR-based Place Recognition using Bird's Eye View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14325/) (2023)
- [CoordiNet: uncertainty-aware pose regressor for reliable vehicle localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10796/) (2021)
- [RING++: Roto-translation Invariant Gram for Global Localization on a Sparse Scan Map](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05984/) (2022)
- [Local Supports Global: Deep Camera Relocalization with Sequence Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04391/) (2019)
- [PointLoc: Deep Pose Regressor for LiDAR Point Cloud Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02392/) (2020)
- [HypLiLoc: Towards Effective LiDAR Pose Regression with Hyperbolic Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00932/) (2023)
- [STD: Stable Triangle Descriptor for 3D place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12435/) (2022)
- [General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04812/) (2024)
- [LiDAR-Based Place Recognition For Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10561/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

LiDAR relocalization aims to estimate the global 6-DoF pose of a sensor in the environment. However, existing regression-based approaches often encounter limitations in dynamic or ambiguous scenarios, as they typically prioritize single-frame inference, leaving the potential of spatio-temporal consistency across scans not fully explored. In this paper, we propose a Temporal-aware Localization framework (TempLoc) designed to enhance the robustness of outdoor localization by effectively modeling sequential consistency. Specifically, a Global Coordinate Estimation module is first introduced to predict point-wise global coordinates and associated uncertainties for each LiDAR scan. A Prior Coordinate Generation module is then presented to estimate inter-frame point correspondences by the attention mechanism. Lastly, an Uncertainty-Guided Coordinate Fusion module is deployed to integrate both predictions of point correspondence in an end-to-end fashion, yielding a more temporally consistent and accurate global 6-DoF pose. Experimental results on the NCLT and Oxford RobotCar benchmarks show that our TempLoc outperforms state-of-the-art methods by a large margin, demonstrating the effectiveness of temporal-aware correspondence modeling in LiDAR relocalization.
