Open-Source LiDAR Time Synchronization System by Mimicking GNSS-clock
This work addresses synchronization issues for researchers and engineers using LiDAR-based systems like SLAM, though it is incremental as it builds on existing hardware-software approaches.
The authors tackled the problem of poor synchronization between LiDAR and other sensors in data fusion algorithms by introducing an open-source hardware-software system that emulates a GNSS-clock, achieving a performance of 1 microsecond accuracy and precision, which outperforms baseline methods like ROS software and LiDAR inner clocking.
Data fusion algorithms that employ LiDAR measurements, such as Visual-LiDAR, LiDAR-Inertial, or Multiple LiDAR Odometry and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) rely on precise timestamping schemes that grant synchronicity to data from LiDAR and other sensors. Poor synchronization performance, due to incorrect timestamping procedure, may negatively affect the algorithms' state estimation results. To provide highly accurate and precise synchronization between the sensors, we introduce an open-source hardware-software LiDAR to other sensors time synchronization system that exploits a dedicated hardware LiDAR time synchronization interface by providing emulated GNSS-clock to this interface, no physical GNSS-receiver is needed. The emulator is based on a general-purpose microcontroller and, due to concise hardware and software architecture, can be easily modified or extended for synchronization of sets of different sensors such as cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs), wheel encoders, other LiDARs, etc. In the paper, we provide an example of such a system with synchronized LiDAR and IMU sensors. We conducted an evaluation of the sensors synchronization accuracy and precision, and state 1 microsecond performance. We compared our results with timestamping provided by ROS software and by a LiDAR inner clocking scheme to underline clear advantages over these two baseline methods.