{"ID":2891376,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17531","arxiv_id":"2507.17531","title":"When and Where Localization Fails: An Analysis of the Iterative Closest Point in Evolving Environment","abstract":"Robust relocalization in dynamic outdoor environments remains a key challenge for autonomous systems relying on 3D lidar. While long-term localization has been widely studied, short-term environmental changes, occurring over days or weeks, remain underexplored despite their practical significance. To address this gap, we present a highresolution, short-term multi-temporal dataset collected weekly from February to April 2025 across natural and semi-urban settings. Each session includes high-density point cloud maps, 360 deg panoramic images, and trajectory data. Projected lidar scans, derived from the point cloud maps and modeled with sensor-accurate occlusions, are used to evaluate alignment accuracy against the ground truth using two Iterative Closest Point (ICP) variants: Point-to-Point and Point-to-Plane. Results show that Point-to-Plane offers significantly more stable and accurate registration, particularly in areas with sparse features or dense vegetation. This study provides a structured dataset for evaluating short-term localization robustness, a reproducible framework for analyzing scan-to-map alignment under noise, and a comparative evaluation of ICP performance in evolving outdoor environments. Our analysis underscores how local geometry and environmental variability affect localization success, offering insights for designing more resilient robotic systems.","short_abstract":"Robust relocalization in dynamic outdoor environments remains a key challenge for autonomous systems relying on 3D lidar. While long-term localization has been widely studied, short-term environmental changes, occurring over days or weeks, remain underexplored despite their practical significance. To address this gap,...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17531","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.17531v1","authors":"[\"Abdel-Raouf Dannaoui\",\"Johann Laconte\",\"Christophe Debain\",\"Francois Pomerleau\",\"Paul Checchin\"]","published":"2025-07-23T14:10:48Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}