DXPR is a depth‑based cross‑modal place recognition framework that matches monocular camera queries to a LiDAR map using a single vision foundation model backbone. By converting both modalities into a unified depth image representation, DXPR learns modality‑invariant global descriptors without modality‑specific encoders. A geometry‑aware overlap miner refines pairwise metric learning by computing pixel‑level overlap scores, and extensive tests on KITTI and Boreas show strong performance across seasons, weather, and day/night conditions, outperforming prior CMPR baselines.
Scene coordinate regression (SCR) achieves strong performance in outdoor LiDAR localization, but it usually requires scene-specific training that can take days, limiting practical deployment. Recent w...
Cross-modal place recognition (CMPR) aims to identify the same location across heterogeneous sensing modalities, such as vision and LiDAR. Existing methods commonly bridge the modality gap using complex alignment modules, multi-stage training, or full fine-tuning of pretrained backbones.
arXiv:2607.16862v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: LiDAR place recognition supports loop closure, relocalization, and multi-agent map management. As robotic platforms increasingly combine LiDARs wit...
By Nikolaos Stathoulopoulos, George Nikolakopoulos
M3GA-Wild is a new benchmark for multi-modal, multi-session ground-to-aerial place recognition in forests, combining synchronized RGB imagery and LiDAR from ground traversals with high‑resolution aerial imagery and multi‑altitude LiDAR over 370 hectares. The dataset includes accurate geo‑referenced 6‑DoF poses and spans 36 km of forest traversals, enabling systematic evaluation of visual, LiDAR, cross‑modal, and multi‑modal methods. Baseline experiments show LiDAR outperforms vision‑only approaches under severe viewpoint changes, while current multi‑modal fusion offers limited gains due to poor cross‑modal alignment, highlighting challenges in cross‑platform localisation and domain gaps.
By Ethan Griffiths, Maryam Haghighat, Simon Denman, Clinton Fookes, Milad Ramezani
The paper introduces a method that combines large language models (LLMs) with LiDAR geometry to answer complex spatial questions by grounding targets directly in LiDAR point clouds. It presents the SpatialLiDAR-QA dataset for relational grounding tasks and the SpatialLiDAR-LM model, which aligns LiDAR features with an LLM to retrieve and refine target coordinates. Experiments show significant gains over existing LiDAR–language models and multi‑camera vision‑language models in precise coordinate prediction.
By Byounggun Park, Giyong Moon, Jusung Kim, Soonmin Hwang
We present M3GA-Wild, the first benchmark for multi-modal, multi-session ground-to-aerial place recognition in forests. M3GA-Wild unifies and extends existing forest localisation datasets, providing a...
arXiv:2506. 22784v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Point-pixel registration between LiDAR point clouds and camera images is a fundamental yet challenging task in autonomous driving and robotic perception.
By Yu Han, Zhiwei Huang, Yanting Zhang, Fangjun Ding, Shen Cai, Xiaoyu Tang, Yanchao Dong, Rui Fan
Learning-based global point cloud registration has achieved remarkable progress, yet its reliance on geometric representations makes existing methods sensitive to variations in point density, scan pattern, viewpoint, and sensor characteristics. We propose CVSD-Reg, a robust global LiDAR registration framework that distills visual semantic priors from a vision foundation model into LiDAR representations.
arXiv:2608. 19536v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning-based global point cloud registration has achieved remarkable progress, yet its reliance on geometric representations makes existing methods sensitive to variations in point density, scan pattern, viewpoint, and sensor characteristics.
By Eunsoo Im, Junghun Suh, Gyeonggwan Lee, Seunghwan Hong
arXiv:2609.21903v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Leaf-wood segmentation of individual trees from LiDAR point clouds is essential for quantitative structure models (QSMs) used in non-destructive biomas...
By Roman Kaharlytskyi, Derek T. Robinson, Roberto Guglielmi
The paper introduces TempLoc, a Temporal‑aware Localization framework that improves outdoor LiDAR relocalization by leveraging spatio‑temporal consistency across scans. It first predicts point‑wise global coordinates with uncertainties, then estimates inter‑frame correspondences using an attention‑based Prior Coordinate Generation module, and finally fuses these predictions in an uncertainty‑guided manner to produce a more accurate global 6‑DoF pose. Experiments on the NCLT and Oxford RobotCar datasets show that TempLoc significantly outperforms existing state‑of‑the‑art methods.
By Minghang Zhu, Zhijing Wang, Yuxin Guo, Chen Liu, Yongshu Huang, Wen Li, Sheng Ao, Cheng Wang