CUPREDS: Multi-sensor Point Cloud Mapping for Local Navigation

Robot mapping usually benefits from the combination of several sensors. However, most algorithms for Simultaneous Localization And Mapping using point clouds only consider a single point cloud as input. There are also scenarios where SLAM is not needed and a simple local map representation without probabilities is preferred, for example due to throughput requirements. For these scenarios, software is needed that combines multiple point clouds into a unified, short-lived, robot-centric representation. Mapping software is only one tool in the software stack and should not compromise other components, which is why its performance-oriented design is of utmost importance. CUPREDS presents a ROS package for local mapping that prioritizes robustness and performance, with minimal overhead for its internal mechanisms.