Lidar-Based Mobile Mapping System for an Indoor Environment

Abstract

The article deals with developing and testing a low-cost measuring system for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) in an indoor environment. The measuring system consists of three orthogonally-placed 2D lidars, a robotic platform with two wheel speed sensors, and an inertial measuring unit (IMU). The paper describes the data processing model used for both the estimation of the trajectory of SLAM and the creation of a 3D model of the environment based on the estimated trajectory of the SLAM. The main problem of SLAM usage is the accumulation of errors caused by the imperfect transformation of two scans into each other. The data processing developed includes an automatic evaluation and correction of the slope of the lidar. Furthermore, during the calculation of the trajectory, a repeatedly traversed area is identified (loop closure), which enables the optimisation of the trajectory determined. The system was tested in the indoor environment of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.

Keywords

• lidar
• imu
• wheel speed sensor
• slam
• 3d model
• loop closure
• trajectory optimisation
• scan matching