LiDAR Localization

LiDAR: Light Detection and Ranging

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Overview

LiDAR localization estimates position and orientation by matching incoming 3D scans to maps or previously seen places, supporting navigation where GPS is unavailable or unreliable. Geometric methods use scan matching, continuous distance fields, and pose-graph optimization, often fused with IMU or GNSS; learning-based approaches use point-cloud descriptors, scene coordinates, or bird’s-eye-view representations for place recognition and relocalization. Systems are evaluated on datasets such as KITTI, NCLT, Oxford RobotCar, and Boreas, as well as in settings like forests, tunnels, highways, and indoor buildings. A central challenge is maintaining accurate, efficient tracking when geometry is sparse or repetitive, scenes change, or sensors differ, while recognizing and communicating uncertainty rather than committing to ambiguous poses.

Latest papers

CardsList

42 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, down 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. An Annotation-to-Detection Framework for Autonomous and Robust Vine Trunk Localization in the Field by Mobile Agricultural Robots

    Mar 20, 2026Dimitrios Chatziparaschis, Elia Scudiero, Brent Sams +1Multimodal Object DetectionObject Detection

    Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univ. of California, Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA · Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Univ. of California, Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA · Gallo, 600 Yosemite Blvd, Modesto, CA 95354, USA

  2. BEV-SLD: Self-Supervised Scene Landmark Detection for Global Localization with LiDAR Bird's-Eye View Images

    Mar 17, 2026David Skuddis, Vincent Ress, Wei Zhang +2LiDAR Localization

    Institute for Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics, University of Stuttgart, Germany

  3. MirrorDrift: Actuated Mirror-Based Attacks on LiDAR SLAM

    Mar 11, 2026Rokuto Nagata, Kenji Koide, Kazuma Ikeda +3Physical Adversarial AttacksLiDAR Localization

    Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Keio University · Department of Information Technology and Human Factors, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

  4. Semantic Landmark Particle Filter for Robot Localisation in Vineyards

    Mar 11, 2026Rajitha de Silva, Jonathan Cox, James R. Heselden +3Robot LocalizationLiDAR Localization

    Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS), University of Lincoln, UK. · MAVLab, TU Delft, Netherlands. · Robotics Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

  5. Degeneracy-Resilient Teach and Repeat for Geometrically Challenging Environments Using FMCW Lidar

    Mar 10, 2026Katya M. Papais, Wenda Zhao, Timothy D. BarfootEmbodied NavigationRobot Navigation

    The authors are with the Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.

  6. PROBE: Probabilistic Occupancy BEV Encoding with Analytical Translation Robustness for 3D Place Recognition

    Mar 6, 2026Jinseop Lee, Byoungho Lee, Gichul YooLiDAR Place RecognitionBird's-Eye-View Representation

    SK Intellix, Seoul, Republic of Korea

  7. TreeLoc++: Robust 6-DoF LiDAR Localization in Forests with a Compact Digital Forest Inventory

    Mar 4, 2026Minwoo Jung, Dongjae Lee, Nived Chebrolu +3RoboticsLiDAR Localization

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India · Oxford Robotics Institute, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

  8. LEAR: Learning Edge-Aware Representations for Event-to-LiDAR Localization

    Mar 2, 2026Kuangyi Chen, Jun Zhang, Yuxi Hu +2LiDAR LocalizationCamera-LiDAR Fusion

    Institute of Visual Computing, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria · Neuromorphic Automation and Intelligence Lab (NAIL), School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China

  9. Boreas Road Trip: A Multi-Sensor Autonomous Driving Dataset on Challenging Roads

    Feb 18, 2026Daniil Lisus, Katya M. Papais, Cedric Le Gentil +4Autonomous Driving DatasetsAutonomous Driving Benchmarks

    University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies, Toronto, Canada · Trimble, Canada

  10. Graph-Loc: Robust Graph-Based LiDAR Pose Tracking with Compact Structural Map Priors under Low Observability and Occlusion

    Feb 9, 2026Wentao Zhao, Yihe Niu, Zikun Chen +4LiDAR LocalizationMap-Based Localization

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China · School of Mathematical Sciences Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  11. DCReg: Decoupled Characterization for Efficient Degenerate LiDAR Registration

    Sep 8, 2025Xiangcheng Hu, Xieyuanli Chen, Mingkai Jia +3Point Cloud RegistrationLiDAR Localization

    Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China · Department of Mechanical Engineering at National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan · School of Intelligent Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China +1

  12. 2Fast-2Lamaa: Large-Scale Lidar-Inertial Localization and Mapping with Continuous Distance Fields

    Oct 7, 2024Cedric Le Gentil, Raphael Falque, Daniil Lisus +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingInertial Odometry

    Robotics Institute, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Canada · Robotics Institute, University of Technology Sydney, Australia