Indoor LiDAR relocalization based on deep learning using a 3D model

Abstract

Indoor localization, navigation and mapping systems highly rely on the initial sensor pose information to achieve a high accuracy. Most existing indoor mapping and navigation systems cannot initialize the sensor poses automatically and consequently these systems cannot perform relocalization and recover from a pose estimation failure. For most indoor environments, a map or a 3D model is often available, and can provide useful information for relocalization. This paper presents a novel relocalization method for LiDAR sensors in indoor environments to estimate the initial LiDAR pose using a CNN pose regression network trained using a 3D model. A set of synthetic LiDAR frames are generated from the 3D model with known poses. Each LiDAR range image is a one-channel range image, used to train the CNN pose regression network from scratch to predict the initial sensor location and orientation. The CNN regression network trained by synthetic range images is used to estimate the poses of the LiDAR using real range images captured in the indoor environment. The results show that the proposed CNN regression network can learn from synthetic LiDAR data and estimate the pose of real LiDAR data with an accuracy of 1.9 m and 8.7 degrees.