Online Robust Sliding-Windowed LiDAR SLAM in Natural Environments

Despite the growing interest for autonomous environmental monitoring, effective SLAM realization in native habitats remains largely unsolved. In this paper, we fill this gap by presenting a novel online graph-based SLAM system for 2D LiDAR sensor in natural environments. By taking advantage of robust weighting scheme, sliding-windowed optimization, fast scan-matcher and parallel computing, our system not only delivers stable performance in cluttered surroundings but also meets real-time constraint. Simulated and experimental results confirm the feasibility and efficiency in the overall design of the proposed system.