F-LVINS: Flexible Lidar-Visual-Inertial Odometry Systems

The development of a new system called Flexible Lidar-Visual-Inertial Odometry (F-LVINS) offers improved localization accuracy even in challenging environments. This system employs a multi-sensor fusion approach that is flexible and adapts to changes in the environment by utilizing a switching mechanism based on the trace values of the Fisher information matrix (FIM). With this mechanism, the F-LVINS system can automatically switch between different modes, such as Lidar-Visual-Inertial Odometry, Lidar Odometry, and Visual-Inertial Odometry, in order to provide the best possible estimate. The system assesses the reliability of each mode based on the FIM’s trace values, which are calculated from the estimation uncertainty obtained from the Lidar and Visual-Inertial Odometry modules. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the F-LVINS system outperforms other existing methods by around 10 % in open data sequences.