Doppler Correspondence: Non-Iterative Scan Matching With Doppler Velocity-Based Correspondence

TL;DR

This paper introduces Doppler Correspondence, a novel non-iterative scan matching method leveraging Doppler velocity data from 4D LiDAR and radar, improving robustness and efficiency in challenging environments.

Contribution

It presents the first Doppler velocity-based correspondence method for 4D point clouds, enabling direct, non-iterative scan matching with enhanced robustness.

Findings

Enables direct matching of consecutive point clouds without iteration

Improves robustness in environments with repetitive patterns

Reduces computational complexity of scan matching

Abstract

Achieving successful scan matching is essential for LiDAR odometry. However, in challenging environments with adverse weather conditions or repetitive geometric patterns, LiDAR odometry performance is degraded due to incorrect scan matching. Recently, the emergence of frequency-modulated continuous wave 4D LiDAR and 4D radar technologies has provided the potential to address these unfavorable conditions. The term 4D refers to point cloud data characterized by range, azimuth, and elevation along with Doppler velocity. Although 4D data is available, most scan matching methods for 4D LiDAR and 4D radar still establish correspondence by repeatedly identifying the closest points between consecutive scans, overlooking the Doppler information. This paper introduces, for the first time, a simple Doppler velocity-based correspondence -- Doppler Correspondence -- that is invariant to translation and small rotation of the sensor, with its geometric and kinematic foundations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method enables the direct matching of consecutive point clouds without an iterative process, making it computationally efficient. Additionally, it provides a more robust correspondence estimation in environments with repetitive geometric patterns.The implementation of our proposed method is publicly available at https://github.com/Tars0523/Doppler Correspondence.