A Low-Cost Portable Lidar-based Mobile Mapping System on an Android Smartphone
Jianzhu Huai, Yuxin Shao, Yujia Zhang, Alper Yilmaz

TL;DR
This paper presents a low-cost, portable mobile mapping system using an Android smartphone, lidar, and GNSS, achieving effective mapping at under $2000 and weighing about 1 kg, suitable for digital twin and metaverse applications.
Contribution
The authors introduce a novel, affordable mobile mapping system integrating lidar, IMU, and GNSS on an Android platform, with open-source software and detailed calibration procedures.
Findings
System costs under 2000 USD
Weight approximately 1 kilogram
Effective for tracking and mapping tasks
Abstract
The rapid advancement of the metaverse, digital twins, and robotics underscores the demand for low-cost, portable mapping systems for reality capture. Current mobile solutions, such as the Leica BLK2Go and lidar-equipped smartphones, either come at a high cost or are limited in range and accuracy. Leveraging the proliferation and technological evolution of mobile devices alongside recent advancements in lidar technology, we introduce a novel, low-cost, portable mobile mapping system. Our system integrates a lidar unit, an Android smartphone, and an RTK-GNSS stick. Running on the Android platform, it features lidar-inertial odometry built with the NDK, and logs data from the lidar, wide-angle camera, IMU, and GNSS. With a total bill of materials (BOM) cost under 2,000 USD and a weight of about 1 kilogram, the system achieves a good balance between affordability and portability. We detail…
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Taxonomy
TopicsRobotics and Sensor-Based Localization · Advanced Optical Sensing Technologies · 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage
