Comparison of Different LiDAR Sensors in SLAM: Criteria Formulation and Results

LiDAR sensors play a crucial role in various applications such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and environmental monitoring. The performance of these sensors significantly impacts the quality and accuracy of 3D mapping in real-world scenarios. While traditional evaluations often rely solely on specifications, a more comprehensive comparison can be made with the sensors' performance in practical mapping contexts. This paper addresses this need by proposing new LiDAR comparison criteria and conducting an extensive comparison of three LiDAR sensors: Livox Mid-360, Ouster OS1, and Velodyne Puck. The new proposed comparison criteria evaluates different sensors' behaviours in diverse environments with no ground truth, particularly by computing and comparing with the proposed reference maps. In each environment, for each sensor, a point cloud 3D map is obtained through a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) method, where the comparison criteria are applied.