Removing Moving Objects without Registration from 3D LiDAR Data Using Range Flow Coupled with IMU Measurements

Removing moving objects from 3D LiDAR data plays a crucial role in advancing real-time odometry, life-long SLAM, and motion planning for robust autonomous navigation. In this paper, we present a novel method aimed at addressing the challenges faced by existing approaches when dealing with scenarios involving significant registration errors. The proposed approach offers a unique solution for removing moving objects without the need for registration, leveraging range flow estimation combined with IMU measurements. To this end, our method performs global range flow estimation by utilizing geometric constraints based on the spatio-temporal gradient information derived from the range image, and we introduce IMU measurements to further enhance the accuracy of range flow estimation. Through extensive quantitative evaluations, our approach showcases an improved performance, with an average mIoU of 45.8%, surpassing baseline methods such as Removert (43.2%) and Peopleremover (32.2%). Specifically, it exhibits a substantial improvement in scenarios characterized by a deterioration in registration performance. Moreover, our method does not rely on costly annotations, which make it suitable for SLAM systems with different sensor setups.