SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE

Does Online Gravity Estimation Matter? Revisiting a Silent Design Split in LiDAR-Inertial Odometry

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 12, 2026 · UTC

LiDAR-inertial odometry (LIO) systems differ in whether they continue estimating gravity after initialization. We compare four gravity-bias state configurations in each of FAST-LIO2 and LIO-SAM, then separately test a gravity-direction factor. Across 12 dataset sequences evaluated with FAST-LIO2, fixing gravity under continuous LiDAR correction produces mean paired changes in vertical and 3D position errors with 90% confidence intervals within $\pm 2\%$. Tests on 4 sequences with LIO-SAM likewise show no consistent benefit from online gravity. Multi-second LiDAR outages, unlike reduced range o

Read original source ↗ Open in workspace

recordType

paper

region

Global