Dr-PoGO: Direct Radar Pose-Graph Optimization
Abstract
This paper introduces Dr-PoGO, a method for Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) using a 2D spinning radar. Unlike cameras or lidars that require line-of-sight, millimetre-wave radars can `see' through dust, falling snow, rain, etc. Accordingly, it is a great modality for robust perception regardless of the weather conditions. While most existing radar-based SLAM methods rely on the extraction of point clouds or features to perform ego-motion estimation, Dr-PoGO leverages direct registration techniques for odometry (DRO) and loop-closure registration. An off-the-shelf radar-focused place recognition algorithm, RaPlace, provides loop-closure candidates. As RaPlace does not provide relative transformations, Dr-PoGO introduces a coarse-to-fine registration that uses visual features and descriptors to obtain an initial guess for the direct transformation refinement. The global trajectory is optimized in a pose-graph optimization. Dr-PoGO demonstrates state-of-the-art performance over 300km of data in various real-world automotive environments. Our implementation is publicly available: https://github.com/utiasASRL/dr_pogo.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.04806,
title = {Dr-PoGO: Direct Radar Pose-Graph Optimization},
author = {Cedric Le Gentil and Weican Li and Leonardo Brizi and Timothy D. Barfoot},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.04806},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Accepted for presentation at ICRA 2026 Cite as @inproceedings{legentil2026drpogo, title={Dr-PoGO: Direct Radar Pose-Graph Optimization}, author={{Le Gentil}, Cedric and Weican, Li and Brizi, Leonardo and Barfoot, Timothy D.}, booktitle={IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)}, year={2026} }