Tightly Coupled Range Inertial Localization on a 3D Prior Map Based on Sliding Window Factor Graph Optimization

This paper presents a range inertial localization algorithm for a 3D prior map. The proposed algorithm tightly couples scan-to-scan and scan-to-map point cloud registration factors along with IMU factors on a sliding window factor graph. The tight coupling of the scan-to-scan and scan-to-map registration factors enables a smooth fusion of sensor ego-motion estimation and map-based trajectory correction that results in robust tracking of the sensor pose under severe point cloud degeneration and defective regions in a map. We also propose an initial sensor state estimation algorithm that robustly estimates the gravity direction and IMU state and helps perform global localization in 3- or 4-DoF for system initialization without prior position information. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in extremely severe situations where the point cloud data becomes degenerate, there are momentary sensor interruptions, or the sensor moves along the map boundary or into unmapped regions.