RTISSLAM-3D: Full 6-DoF self-navigation With an In-Air 3D Imaging Sonar

What happened

arXiv:2610.22552v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Echolocating bats navigate dense forests using sonar alone, and in-air 3D imaging sonars now capture the entire frontal hemisphere with every pulse. Sonar SLAM, however, has so far been planar: current systems estimate a 2D trajectory and discard the elevation information in the sonar images, an assumption that does not hold on rough and sloped terrain such as a forest floor.

The loop closures reduced the horizontal error of the acoustic odometry from 1.74m to 0.28m, with a height error of 0.12m, and 94.6% of the resulting 3D sonar map lies within 0.3 m of the lidar map. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.