Sep 14, 2026 · cs.ROJ/K move · Enter open · S save
Zhongbi Luo, Yunjia Wang, Herman Bruyninckx, Peter Slaets
Division of Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics, Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium · Division of Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence (DTAI), Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven, 8200 Bruges, Belgium · Department of Mechanical Engineering, TU Eindhoven, 5612 AZ Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Autonomous surface vehicles operating in inland waterways require a persistent representation of both surrounding structures and the water surface. LiDAR-based simultaneous localization and mapping often produces sparse or missing water returns, leaving this operational surface absent from the reconstructed scene. We propose HydroMap, an odometry-decoupled framework that reconstructs water surface elevation from stereo observations and integrates it with the structural map. Per-frame water points form joint cell observations with propagated stereo and pose uncertainty, and successive observations are fused into a persistent probabilistic elevation map. Semantic map conversion then combines the elevation map with structural geometry in a unified 2.5D representation of water, boundaries, structures, and overhead regions. On the Pohang Canal and Leuven Vaart datasets, the elevation RMSE remains below 5 cm relative to LiDAR references expressed in the same map frame. The elevation and semantic maps are published at 2 Hz and 1 Hz, respectively. HydroMap thereby complements LiDAR maps with a persistent representation of the water surface for downstream navigation in inland waterways.