M-LOAM

Robust Odometry and Mapping for Multi-LiDAR Systems with Online Extrinsic Calibration

M-LOAM is a robust system for multi-LiDAR extrinsic calibration, real-time odometry, and mapping. Without manual intervention, our system can start with several extrinsic-uncalibrated LiDARs, automatically calibrate their extrinsics, and provide accurate poses as well as a globally consistent map.

Authors: Jianhao Jiao, Haoyang Ye, Yilong Zhu, Linxin Jiang, Ming Liu from RAM-LAB, HKUST

Project website: https://ram-lab.com/file/site/m-loam

Videos:

Related Papers

• Robust Odometry and Mapping for Multi-LiDAR Systems with Online Extrinsic Calibration, Jianhao Jiao, Haoyang Ye, Yilong Zhu, Ming Liu, under review. pdf
• Greedy-Based Feature Selection for Efficient LiDAR SLAM, Jianhao Jiao, Yilong Zhu, Haoyang Ye, Huaiyang Huang, Peng Yun, Linxin Jiang, Lujia Wang, Ming Liu, under review.
• MLOD: Awareness of Extrinsic Perturbation in Multi-LiDAR 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving, Jianhao Jiao*, Peng Yun*, Lei Tai, Ming Liu, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS, 2020). pdf

If you use M-LOAM for your academic research, please cite one of our paper. bib

1. Prerequisites

1.1 Ubuntu and ROS

Ubuntu 64-bit 16.04 or 18.04. ROS Kinetic or Melodic. ROS Installation

1.2. Ceres Solver && Eigen3

 ./setup/install_eigen3_ceres.sh

1.3. OpenMP

  sudo apt install libomp-dev

1.4 Libpointmarcher

 ./setup/install_libnabo.sh
 ./setup/install_libpointmatcher.sh

2. Build M-LOAM on ROS

  mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
  cd ~/catkin_ws/src
  git clone https://github.com/gogojjh/M-LOAM.git
  catkin build mloam
  source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

3. Example

• Datasets collected with different platforms:

  1. Simulation Robot (SR)
  2. Real Handheld Device (RHD)
  3. Real Vechile (RV)
  4. Oxford RoboCar (OR)

• Run M-LOAM and baseline methods

  1. We provide a script to perform batch testing of M-LOAM with baseline methods
  2. Enter the script folder: roscd mloam/script/
  3. Modify the python script: run_mloam.py for specific platforms with correct path
  4. Modify the shell files for methods in xx_main.sh
  5. Run the python script: python2 run_mloam.py -program=single_test -sequence=xx -start_idx=0 -end_idx=0

4. System pipeline

This could help you to understand the pipeline of M-LOAM. Note that mloam_loop is in development.

5. Issues

I have modified the code with several times and tried different new features during the journal review process. The code style is not very perfect. Also in some sequeneces, M-LOAM may not achieve the best performence. Hope you can understand and I will try to fix them.

6. TODO

1. Parameter tunning, and a more detailed tutorial .
2. loop closure.
3. Docker support. The initial Docker file is in the folder: docker/Dockerfile
4. etc.

6. Acknowledgements

Thanks for these great works from which we learned to write M-LOAM

• LOAM (J. Zhang and S. Singh. LOAM: Lidar Odometry and Mapping in Real-time) and its advanced version: A-LOAM;
• LEGO-LOAM
• LIO-MAPPING
• VINS-MONO
• Lidar Perception Library

7. Licence

The source code is released under GPLv3 license.

We are still working on improving the code reliability. For any technical issues, please contact Jianhao Jiao jjiao@ust.hk.

For commercial inquiries, please contact Prof.Ming Liu eelium@ust.hk.