Generic 2D/3D SLAM with NDT maps for lifelong application

In this paper, we present a new, generic approach for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). First of all, we propose an abstraction of the underlying sensor data using Normal Distribution Transform (NDT) maps that are suitable for making our approach independent from the used sensor and the dimension of the generated maps. We present some modifications for the original NDT mapping to handle free-space measurements explicitly and to enable its usage in dynamic environments with moving obstacles and persons. In the second part of this paper we describe our graph-based SLAM approach that is designed for lifelong usage. Therefore, the memory and computational complexity is limited by pruning the pose graph in an appropriate way.