Dynamic-Aware and Static Context Network for large-scale 3D place recognition

Abstract

3D point cloud-based place recognition enables robots to obtain precise global positions without GPS, correct trajectory drift in SLAM, and recover from the kidnapped robot problem. However, in outdoor environments, the presence of moving objects can cause occlusions in point clouds and introduce noise into the data, leading to localization failures. To address this issue, we propose a Dynamic-Aware and Static Context Network (DASC-Net) for large-scale 3D place recognition. Our approach leverages the spatio-temporal consistency of point cloud sequences to accurately segment dynamic objects while incorporating static point cloud context to compensate for feature loss caused by noise interference or occlusions from dynamic objects, thereby enhancing robustness and generalization. Specifically, DASC-Net adopts a two-stage strategy: first, it introduces a coarse-to-fine moving object segmentation method to effectively eliminate dynamic noise; second, it utilizes spatial context association and multi-scale feature aggregation to improve static feature representation and matching. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that DASC-Net outperforms existing place recognition approaches, particularly in dynamic scenes.