{"ID":2840858,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13985","arxiv_id":"2511.13985","title":"LIO-MARS: Non-uniform Continuous-time Trajectories for Real-time LiDAR-Inertial-Odometry","abstract":"Autonomous robotic systems heavily rely on environment knowledge to safely navigate. For search \u0026 rescue, a flying robot requires robust real-time perception, enabled by complementary sensors. IMU data constrains acceleration and rotation, whereas LiDAR measures accurate distances around the robot. Building upon the LiDAR odometry MARS, our LiDAR-inertial odometry (LIO) jointly aligns multi-resolution surfel maps with a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) using a continuous-time B-spline trajectory. Our new scan window uses non-uniform temporal knot placement to ensure continuity over the whole trajectory without additional scan delay. Moreover, we accelerate essential covariance and GMM computations with Kronecker sums and products by a factor of 3.3. An unscented transform de-skews surfels, while a splitting into intra-scan segments facilitates motion compensation during spline optimization. Complementary soft constraints on relative poses and preintegrated IMU pseudo-measurements further improve robustness and accuracy. Extensive evaluation showcases the state-of-the-art quality of our LIO-MARS w.r.t. recent LIO systems on various handheld, ground and aerial vehicle-based datasets.","short_abstract":"Autonomous robotic systems heavily rely on environment knowledge to safely navigate. For search \u0026 rescue, a flying robot requires robust real-time perception, enabled by complementary sensors. IMU data constrains acceleration and rotation, whereas LiDAR measures accurate distances around the robot. Building upon the Li...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13985","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.13985v1","authors":"[\"Jan Quenzel\",\"Sven Behnke\"]","published":"2025-11-17T23:35:07Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}