A Survey of Low-Cost 3D Laser Scanning Technology

Abstract

By moving a commercial 2D LiDAR, 3D maps of the environment can be built, based on the data of a 2D LiDAR and its movements. Compared to a commercial 3D LiDAR, a moving 2D LiDAR is more economical. A series of problems need to be solved in order for a moving 2D LiDAR to perform better, among them, improving accuracy and real-time performance. In order to solve these problems, estimating the movements of a 2D LiDAR, and identifying and removing moving objects in the environment, are issues that should be studied. More specifically, calibrating the installation error between the 2D LiDAR and the moving unit, the movement estimation of the moving unit, and identifying moving objects at low scanning frequencies, are involved. As actual applications are mostly dynamic, and in these applications, a moving 2D LiDAR moves between multiple moving objects, we believe that, for a moving 2D LiDAR, how to accurately construct 3D maps in dynamic environments will be an important future research topic. Moreover, how to deal with moving objects in a dynamic environment via a moving 2D LiDAR has not been solved by previous research.