DB-TSDF fuses LiDAR point clouds into a dense signed distance field using fixed-size directional kernels. The per-frame update cost is bounded and largely independent of map resolution, enabling high-resolution CPU mapping.
DB-TSDF: Directional Bitmask-based TSDF for Efficient Volumetric Mapping
CPU-only TSDF mapping with constant per-scan time via directional kernels and bitmask distance encoding. Open-source implementation and evaluation assets available.
Overview
Method
Each LiDAR return selects a precomputed, direction-dependent kernel (aligned to azimuth/elevation bins) and applies a bitwise AND update to the voxel’s 32-bit distance mask. A hemispherical shadow region increments a saturating counter to confirm occupancy. The compact 8-byte voxel layout is cache-friendly and parallelizable.
Results
Qualitative results and timings. See the paper for full quantitative comparisons.
Citation
If you use DB-TSDF, please cite:
BibTeX
@misc{DB_TSDF,
title={DB-TSDF: Directional Bitmask-based Truncated Signed Distance Fields for Efficient Volumetric Mapping},
author={Jose E. Maese and Luis Merino and Fernando Caballero},
year={2025},
eprint={2509.20081},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.RO},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20081},
}
Funding
This work was supported by PICRA 4.0 (PLEC2023-010353) funded by MCIN/AEI and the Spanish Research Agency, and by COBUILD (PID2024-161069OB-C31) funded by MICIU/AEI and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER, EU).
