KDD-LOAM: Jointly Learned Keypoint Detector and Descriptors Assisted LiDAR Odometry and Mapping

Sparse keypoint matching based on distinct 3D feature representations can improve the efficiency and robust- ness of point cloud registration. Existing learning-based 3D descriptors and keypoint detectors are either independent or loosely coupled, so they cannot fully adapt to each other. In this work, we propose a tightly coupled keypoint detector and de- scriptor (TCKDD) based on a multi-task fully convolutional net- work with a probabilistic detection loss. In particular, this self- supervised detection loss fully adapts the keypoint detector to any jointly learned descriptors and benefits the self-supervised learning of descriptors. Extensive experiments on both indoor and outdoor datasets show that our TCKDD achieves state-of- the-art performance in point cloud registration. Furthermore, we design a keypoint detector and descriptors-assisted LiDAR odometry and mapping framework (KDD-LOAM), whose real- time odometry relies on keypoint descriptor matching-based RANSAC. The sparse keypoints are further used for efficient scan-to-map registration and mapping. Experiments on KITTI dataset demonstrate that KDD-LOAM significantly surpasses LOAM and shows competitive performance in odometry.