A Low-Cost Portable Lidar-based Mobile Mapping System on an Android Smartphone

The rapid advancement of the metaverse, digital twins, and robotics underscores the demand for low-cost, portable mapping systems for reality capture. Current mobile solutions, such as the Leica BLK2Go and lidar-equipped smartphones, either come at a high cost or are limited in range and accuracy. Leveraging the proliferation and technological evolution of mobile devices alongside recent advancements in lidar technology, we introduce a novel, low-cost, portable mobile mapping system. Our system integrates a lidar unit, an Android smartphone, and an RTK-GNSS stick. Running on the Android platform, it features lidar-inertial odometry built with the NDK, and logs data from the lidar, wide-angle camera, IMU, and GNSS. With a total bill of materials (BOM) cost under 2,000 USD and a weight of about 1 kilogram, the system achieves a good balance between affordability and portability. We detail the system design, multisensor calibration, synchronization, and evaluate its performance for tracking and mapping. To further contribute to the community, the system's design and software are made open source at: https://github.com/OSUPCVLab/marslogger_android/releases/tag/v2.1