The high diversity of urban environments, at both the inter and intra levels, poses challenges for robotics research. Such challenges include discrepancies in urban features between cities and the deterioration of sensor measurements within a city. With such diversity in consideration, this paper aims to provide Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and image data acquired in complex urban environments. In contrast to existing datasets, the presented dataset encapsulates various complex urban features and addresses the major issues of complex urban areas, such as unreliable and sporadic Global Positioning System (GPS) data, multi-lane roads, complex building structures, and the abundance of highly dynamic objects. This paper provides two types of LiDAR sensor data (2D and 3D) as well as navigation sensor data with commercial-level accuracy and high-level accuracy. In addition, two levels of sensor data are provided for the purpose of assisting in the complete validation of algorithms using consumer-grade sensors. A forward-facing stereo camera was utilized to capture visual images of the environment and the position information of the vehicle that was estimated through simultaneous localization mapping (SLAM) are offered as a baseline. This paper presents 3D map data generated by the SLAM algorithm in the LASer (LAS) format for a wide array of research purposes, and a file player and a data viewer have been made available via the Github webpage to allow researchers to conveniently utilize the data in a Robot Operating System (ROS) environment. The provided file player is capable of sequentially publishing large quantities of data, similar to the rosbag player. The dataset in its entirety can be found at http://irap.kaist.ac.kr/dataset.

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Fig. 1: This paper provides the complex urban data set including metropolitan area, apartment building complex and underground parking lot. Sample scenes from the data set can be found in https://youtu.be/IguZjmLf5V0.Abstract-This paper presents a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data set that targets complex urban environments. Urban environments with high-rise buildings and congested traffic pose a significant challenge for many robotics applications. The presented data set is unique in the sense it is able to capture the genuine features of an urban environment (e.g. metropolitan areas, large building complexes and underground parking lots). Data of two-dimensional (2D) and threedimensional (3D) LiDAR, which are typical types of LiDAR sensors, are provided in the data set. The two 16-ray 3D LiDARs are tilted on both sides for maximal coverage. One 2D LiDAR faces backward while the other faces forwards to collect data of roads and buildings, respectively. Raw sensor data from Fiber Optic Gyro (FOG), Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and the Global Positioning System (GPS) are presented in a file format for vehicle pose estimation. The pose information of the vehicle estimated at 100 Hz is also presented after applying the graph simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm. For the convenience of development, the file player and data viewer in Robot Operating System (ROS) environment were also released via the web page. The full data sets are available at: http://irap.kaist.ac.kr/dataset. In this website, 3D preview of each data set is provided using WebGL.

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In this paper, we propose a thermal-infrared simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system enhanced by sparse depth measurements from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Thermal-infrared cameras are relatively robust against fog, smoke, and dynamic lighting conditions compared to RGB cameras operating under the visible spectrum. Due to the advantages of thermal-infrared cameras, exploiting them for motion estimation and mapping is highly appealing. However, operating a thermal-infrared camera directly in existing vision-based methods is difficult because of the modality difference. This paper proposes a method to use sparse depth measurement for 6-DOF motion estimation by directly tracking under 14-bit raw measurement of the thermal camera. In addition, we perform a refinement to improve the local accuracy and include a loop closure to maintain global consistency. The experimental results demonstrate that the system is not only robust under various lighting conditions such as day and night, but also overcomes the scale problem of monocular cameras. The video is available at https://youtu.be/oO7lT3uAzLc.

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