mola_lidar_odometry

LIDAR odometry component based on the MOLA and MRPT frameworks, compatible with ROS 2.

Contents

This repository provides a C++ library mola_lidar_odometry implementing LIDAR odometry. Sensor input is provided via MOLA components, and ROS 2 example launch files are provided in ros2-launchs.

A CLI interface mola-lidar-odometry-cli is also provided for running on offline datasets.

Build and install

Refer to: https://docs.mola-slam.org/latest/#installing

Lidar Inertial Odometry (LIO) demo with Oxford Spires:

Lidar Odometry (LO) demo with KITTI:

Documentation and tutorials

See: https://docs.mola-slam.org/

ROS build farm status

Distro	Develop branch	Releases	Stable release
ROS2 Humble (u22.04)		amd64 arm64
ROS 2 Jazzy @ u24.04		amd64 arm64
ROS 2 Kilted @ u24.04		amd64 arm64
ROS 2 Lyrical (u26.04)		amd64 arm64
ROS 2 Rolling (u26.04)		amd64 arm64

EOL Distro	Last release
ROS2 Iron (u22.04)

Citation

The latest publication on MOLA is (ArXiV).

@article{blanco2025mola_lo,
    author = {Blanco-Claraco, Jose Luis},
    title ={{A flexible framework for accurate LiDAR odometry, map manipulation, and localization}},
    journal = {The International Journal of Robotics Research},
    volume = {44},
    number = {9},
    pages = {1553--1599},
    year = {2025},
    doi = {10.1177/02783649251316881},
    URL = { https://doi.org/10.1177/02783649251316881},
    eprint = {2407.20465},
}

License

Copyright (C) 2018-2026 Jose Luis Blanco jlblanco@ual.es, University of Almeria

This package is released under the GNU GPL v3 license as open source, with the main intention of being useful for research and evaluation purposes. Commercial licenses available upon request.

Contributions require acceptance of the Contributor License Agreement (CLA).

Changelog for package mola_lidar_odometry

3.0.0 (2026-07-17)

• Merge pull request #101 from MOLAorg/fix/relocalize-tf-source-and-sigma-recovery fix: two bugs blocking GNSS+IMU relocalization (FromStateEstimator)
• fix: MOLA_LOCALIZATION_PUBLISH_TF_SOURCE used the wrong module-name string
• fix: maximum_sigma default equal to initial_sigma made sustained-failure recovery a no-op
• Remove dead mrpt/gui included
• fix: enable adaptive-threshold recovery by default; add initial_pose launch arg
• fix: show sensible errors if in localization only but there's no local map
• feat: map freeze after relocalization (#100)
• fix: drop stale LiDAR scans and keep the freshest under overload (#99)
• feat: export as plot data the complete onLidar CPU time
• fix: don't process/insert a scan into the map before initial localization converges
• fix: don't discard a preexisting map on IMU releveling or bad-first-ICP restart
• Merge pull request #98 from MOLAorg/feature/imu-leveling-preserve-xyzyaw fix: preserve x/y/z/yaw prior in InitLocalization::PitchAndRollFromIMU
• Merge pull request #97 from MOLAorg/feature/imu-bag-recv-timestamp-env-var Wire MOLA_IMU_USE_BAG_RECV_TIME env var for IMU bag-recv-time timestamp override
• fix: preserve x/y/z/yaw prior in InitLocalization::PitchAndRollFromIMU
• lidar_odometry_from_rosbag2.yaml: wire MOLA_IMU_USE_BAG_RECV_TIME env var
• debug: add env-gated ICP quality/adaptive-threshold trace
• Merge pull request #95 from MOLAorg/feat/shared-keyframe-velocity-metadata Carry per-keyframe velocity metadata in shared-keyframe push
• refactor: remove dead pushKeyframeToSharedKeyframeMap helper
• feat: carry per-keyframe velocity metadata in shared-keyframe push
• Merge pull request #94 from MOLAorg/feat/icp-metric-plots
• feat: stream ICP time/goodness to mola_viz_imgui plot windows
• Merge pull request #93 from MOLAorg/feat/expose-approximate-cov-env-var
• feat: expose KeyframePointCloudMap's approximate_cov as MOLA_LOCALMAP_APPROXIMATE_COV
• docs: show ImGui as the new default
• feat: expose new simple estimator GNSS fuse params
• feat: pass georef to state estimator, if compatible
• feat: expose color changing as public API
• launch: default viz module to MolaVizImGui with per-app imgui_app_name Sets a unique imgui_app_name in each launch file so Dear ImGui's layout persistence stores a separate UI configuration per app.
• fix: uncheck show trajectory never cleared old viz
• Merge pull request #92 from MOLAorg/feat/viz-decay-lookat-frame-aware feat: frame-aware decay clouds and camera look-at for mapper_3d
• feat: frame-aware decay clouds and camera look-at for mapper_3d
• Merge pull request #91 from MOLAorg/feat/use-viz-with-movable-frames
• feat: viz with movable frames
• Merge pull request #90 from MOLAorg/feat/push-to-central-map feat: push KFs to central map server
• Merge pull request #89 from MOLAorg/fix/imu-grav-align fix: bugs in gravity-alignment from IMU accelerometer
• Merge pull request #88 from MOLAorg/feat/delayed-map-load feat: add delayed map load option
• Merge pull request #87 from MOLAorg/fix/state-mtx-non-recursive refactor: convert state_mtx_ from recursive_mutex to plain mutex
• Merge pull request #86 from MOLAorg/fix/lidar-odometry-shutdown-order-segfault fix: avoid use-after-free during shutdown via LidarOdometry::onQuit()
• Merge pull request #85 from MOLAorg/feat/ros2-launch-tf-no-ns-option
• feat: add new ros2 launch argument to optionally disable /tf NS remappings
• Merge pull request #84 from MOLAorg/feat/simpler-adaptive-sigma feat: simplify adaptive sigma

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