LiDAR Place Recognition

LiDAR: Light Detection and Ranging

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Overview

LiDAR place recognition matches a new point-cloud scan to a database of places, helping robots relocalize and detect loop closures even when routes are revisited from different viewpoints or at different times. Approaches range from handcrafted descriptors such as Scan Context and bird’s-eye-view or range-image representations to learned point-cloud and transformer embeddings, often followed by candidate re-ranking or geometric registration. Methods are tested on datasets such as KITTI, Oxford RobotCar, NCLT, and nuScenes using retrieval measures like Recall@1 and settings that vary sessions, sensors, fields of view, and modalities. A central challenge is maintaining reliable matches across environmental and sensor changes without excessive computation; cross-modal alignment and performance in unstructured settings remain difficult.

Latest papers

CardsList

20 papers1 paper in the last four weeks, down 75% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. TNVD-SC: Diagnosing Scan Context Failures in Forests with Terrain-Normalized Vertical Distributions

    Oct 19, 2026Jineon Kim, Jhonghyun AnLiDAR Place Recognition

    School of Computing, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Republic of Korea.

  2. Transformer-based Monte Carlo Localization in Construction Meshes

    Sep 25, 2026Linus Kramer, William Talbot, Olga Vysotska +1Robot LocalizationLiDAR Localization

    Robotic Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Zurich 8092, Switzerland

  3. UpDown-SC: Gravity-Canonicalized Dual-Envelope Scan Context for Indoor LiDAR Place Recognition

    Sep 24, 2026Jie Xu, Yongxin Yang, Ziyi Jin +4LiDAR Place RecognitionLiDAR Localization

    Anyverse Dynamics, Beijing, China

  4. M3GA-Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Multi-Modal Multi-session Ground-to-Aerial Place Recognition in Forests

    Sep 19, 2026Ethan Griffiths, Maryam Haghighat, Simon Denman +2Visual Place RecognitionLiDAR Place Recognition

    Queensland University of Technology (QUT) · CSIRO Robotics

  5. DXPR: Depth-Based Vision-LiDAR Cross-Modal Place Recognition Using Vision Foundation Models

    Sep 8, 2026Yungsoo Han, Youngseok Jang, Seungwon Roh +2LiDAR Place RecognitionVisual Place Recognition

    Department of Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · InnoCORE AI-Transformed Aerospace Research Center, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea. · Interdisciplinary Program in Artificial Intelligence, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

  6. GeoUniPR: A Geometry-Consistent Unified Framework for Cross-Modal Place Recognition

    Aug 10, 2026Wonbong Kim, Jiatong Xiao, Rui Li +5Cross-Modal Representation LearningLiDAR Place Recognition

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous System, Tongji University, Shanghai, China · MOE Key Lab of Embedded System and Service Computing, Tongji University, Shanghai, China +1

  7. InLiER: Learning-Free Heterogeneous LiDAR Place Recognition via Intermediate Mixed-Radix Structural Keypoint Tokenization

    Jul 18, 2026Nikolaos Stathoulopoulos, George NikolakopoulosLiDAR Place RecognitionLiDAR Localization

    Robotics and AI Group, Department of Computer, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, 971 87 Luleå, Sweden

  8. PROBE-X: Learning-Free Cross-FOV Place Recognition

    Jul 7, 2026Jinseop LeeLiDAR Place RecognitionVisual Place Recognition

    SK Intellix, Seoul, Republic of Korea

  9. PinNet: Keypoint-Aware Learned Local Descriptors with Geometric Embedding for Loop Closure in LiDAR SLAM

    Jun 26, 2026Yanlong Ma, Nakul S. Joshi, Christa S. Robison +2Simultaneous Localization and MappingRepresentation Learning

    University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. · DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Adelphi, MD, USA.

  10. Aerial-ground LiDAR place recognition with patch-level self-supervised learning and expanded reciprocal re-ranking

    Jun 17, 2026Yandi Yang, Xianghong Zou, Jianping Li +4LiDAR Place RecognitionLearning to Rank

    Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, T2N 1N4, Canada · School of Advanced Manufacturing, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China · School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore +1

  11. G2IA: Geometry-Guided Instance-Aware Retrieval and Refinement for Cross-Modal Place Recognition

    Jun 13, 2026Xianyun Jiao, Jingyi Xu, Zhongmiao Yan +2LiDAR Place RecognitionVisual Place Recognition

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · National University of Defense Technology

  12. Heterogeneous LiDAR Early Fusion and Learned Re-Ranking Strategy for Robust Long-Term Place Recognition in Unstructured Environments

    Jun 11, 2026Judith Vilella-Cantos, Juan José Cabrera, Mónica Ballesta +2LiDAR Place RecognitionAgricultural Robotics

    University Institute for Engineering Research, Miguel Hernández University, Avda. de la Universidad s/n, Edificio Innova, Elche, 03202, Alicante, Spain

  13. EdgeLPR: On the Deep Neural Network trade-off between Precision and Performance in LiDAR Place Recognition

    May 4, 2026Pierpaolo Serio, Hetian Wang, Zixiang Wei +4Mixed-Precision QuantizationEfficient Neural Network Inference

    Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. · School of Engineering and Material Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K. · Research and Development, Toyota Material Handling Manufacturing Italy, Bologna, Italy.

  14. MPTF-Net: Multi-view Pyramid Transformer Fusion Network for LiDAR-based Place Recognition

    Apr 6, 2026Shuyuan Li, Zihang Wang, Xieyuanli Chen +5LiDAR Place RecognitionFeature Fusion

  15. Voronoi-based Second-order Descriptor with Whitened Metric in LiDAR Place Recognition

    Mar 16, 2026Jaein Kim, Hee Bin Yoo, Dong-Sig Han +1Feature WhiteningLiDAR Place Recognition

    Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Seoul National University · Département d’Informatique, École Normale Supérieure (ENS) · Department of Computing, Imperial College London +1

  16. RLPR: Radar-to-LiDAR Place Recognition via Two-Stage Asymmetric Cross-Modal Alignment for Autonomous Driving

    Mar 9, 2026Zhangshuo Qi, Jingyi Xu, Luqi Cheng +2Autonomous DrivingCross-Modal Representation Learning

    Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China. · Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, 200240, China.

  17. 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

  18. WildCross: A Cross-Modal Large Scale Benchmark for Place Recognition and Metric Depth Estimation in Natural Environments

    Mar 2, 2026Joshua Knights, Joseph Reid, Kaushik Roy +3Visual Place RecognitionMetric Depth Estimation

    CSIRO Robotics, Data61, CSIRO, Australia. · Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia.

  19. VGGT-MPR: VGGT-Enhanced Multimodal Place Recognition in Autonomous Driving Environments

    Feb 23, 2026Jingyi Xu, Zhangshuo Qi, Zhongmiao Yan +5Camera-LiDAR FusionAutonomous Driving

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University. · Beijing Institute of Technology. · National University of Defense Technology.

  20. Calibrated Keyframe-Segment Selection for Descriptor-Agnostic LiDAR Loop Closure in Repetitive Environments

    Dec 10, 2025Jaehyun Kim, Seungwon Choi, Wonseok Kang +1Loop Closure DetectionSimultaneous Localization and Mapping