# Performance Assessment of Portable SLAM-Based Systems for 3D Documentation of Historic Built Heritage

## TL;DR

This paper evaluates portable SLAM systems for 3D documentation of historic buildings, showing their effectiveness and limitations in capturing architectural details.

## Contribution

The study experimentally assesses three portable SLAM systems for 3D documentation of historic religious buildings, focusing on performance metrics under real-world conditions.

## Key findings

- All tested SLAM systems efficiently captured primary geometries of complex historic buildings.
- Differences in accuracy, data consistency, and architectural detail readability were observed among systems.
- Portable SLAM systems provide reliable datasets suitable for preliminary documentation and multidisciplinary analyses.

## Abstract

The rapid and reliable geometric documentation of historic built heritage is a key requirement for a wide range of conservation, analysis, and risk assessment activities. In recent years, portable and wearable Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)-based systems have emerged as efficient tools for fast 3D data acquisition, offering significant advantages in terms of operational speed, accessibility, and flexibility. This paper presents an experimental performance assessment of three portable SLAM-based mobile mapping systems applied to the 3D documentation of historic religious buildings. Two historic parish churches in the Lunigiana region (Italy) are used as case studies to evaluate the systems under real-world conditions. The analysis focuses on key performance indicators relevant to metric documentation, including georeferencing accuracy, 3D model accuracy, point cloud density and resolution, and model completeness. The results highlight the capabilities and limitations of the tested systems, showing that all instruments can efficiently capture the primary geometries of complex historic buildings, while differences emerge in terms of accuracy, data consistency, and readability of architectural details. Although the work is framed within a broader research project addressing seismic vulnerability of historic structures, this contribution specifically focuses on the experimental evaluation of SLAM-based surveying performance. The results demonstrate that portable SLAM systems provide reliable geometric datasets suitable for preliminary documentation tasks and for supporting further multidisciplinary analyses, representing a valuable resource for the rapid 3D documentation of historic built heritage.