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arXiv · 2209.15397

KISS-ICP: In Defense of Point-to-Point ICP -- Simple, Accurate, and Robust Registration If Done the Right Way

Abstract

Robust and accurate pose estimation of a robotic platform, so-called sensor-based odometry, is an essential part of many robotic applications. While many sensor odometry systems made progress by adding more complexity to the ego-motion estimation process, we move in the opposite direction. By removing a majority of parts and focusing on the core elements, we obtain a surprisingly effective system that is simple to realize and can operate under various environmental conditions using different LiDAR sensors. Our odometry estimation approach relies on point-to-point ICP combined with adaptive thresholding for correspondence matching, a robust kernel, a simple but widely applicable motion compensation approach, and a point cloud subsampling strategy. This yields a system with only a few parameters that in most cases do not even have to be tuned to a specific LiDAR sensor. Our system using the same parameters performs on par with state-of-the-art methods under various operating conditions using different platforms: automotive platforms, UAV-based operation, vehicles like segways, or handheld LiDARs. We do not require integrating IMU information and solely rely on 3D point cloud data obtained from a wide range of 3D LiDAR sensors, thus, enabling a broad spectrum of different applications and operating conditions. Our open-source system operates faster than the sensor frame rate in all presented datasets and is designed for real-world scenarios.

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Ignacio Vizzo, Tiziano Guadagnino, Benedikt Mersch, Louis Wiesmann, Jens Behley, Cyrill Stachniss. 2022-09-30. KISS-ICP: In Defense of Point-to-Point ICP -- Simple, Accurate, and Robust Registration If Done the Right Way. https://doi.org/10.1109/lra.2023.3236571

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