Navigation & SLAM

LiDAR Odometry

LiDAR odometry is the estimation of a robot's incremental ego-motion by registering successive LiDAR scans, typically via iterative closest point variants or feature-based matching of edge and planar points as popularized by LOAM. Modern pipelines tightly fuse an IMU for motion prediction and scan de-skewing, as in LIO-SAM and FAST-LIO, achieving low-drift trajectories in real time even during aggressive motion.

Why it matters for physical AI

Reliable ego-motion estimation without GPS enables warehouse, construction, and off-road deployment, and it supplies the accurate pose priors that mapping, navigation, and mobile manipulation stacks depend on.