What is LIDAR used for in Rtabmap

[kolohe113]

Hi, I want to know what would one use a LIDAR in Rtabmap. I know we can use it to detect loop closure with Reg/Strategy =1. Its there anything else?

[matlabbe]

Hi,

Actually it doesn't detect loop closures with lidar, as a bag-of-words approach is used for that. With Reg/Strategy=1, the lidar can be used to refine odometry (RGBD/NeighborLinkRefining=true, see section 3.1 of [1]), to find proximity detections (see section 3.3 of [1]) and to create 2D maps very fast.

cheers,
Mathieu

[1] Labbé, M. & Michaud, F. Auton Robot (2018) 42: 1133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-017-9682-5 (pdf)