Simultaneous Localization of Rail Vehicles and Mapping of Environment With Multiple LiDARs

Precise and real-time rail vehicle localization as well as railway environment monitoring is crucial for railroad safety. In this letter, we propose a multi-LiDAR based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system for railway applications. Our approach starts with measurements preprocessing to denoise and synchronize multiple LiDAR inputs. Different frame-to-frame registration methods are used according to the LiDAR placement. In addition, we leverage the plane constraints from extracted rail tracks to improve the system accuracy. The local map is further aligned with global map utilizing absolute position measurements. Considering the unavoidable metal abrasion and screw loosening, online extrinsic refinement is awakened for long-during operation. The proposed method is extensively verified on datasets gathered over 3000 km. The results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves accurate and robust localization together with effective mapping for large-scale environments. Our system has already been applied to a freight traffic railroad for monitoring tasks.

I. Introduction

Multi-modal sensor integration has become a crucial prerequisite for the real-world navigation systems. Recent studies have reported successful deployment of LiDAR-inertial system in handled devices [1], legged robots [2], unmanned ground and aerial vehicles (UAV and UGV) [3], [4], autonomous cars [5], and boats [6]. However, the LiDAR-inertial based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is still an open problem for rail vehicle applications.