Robust and reliable place recognition and loop closure detection in agricultural environments is still an open problem. In particular, orchards are a difficult case study due to structural similarity across the entire field. In this work, we address the place recognition problem in orchards resorting to 3D LiDAR data, which is considered a key modality for robustness. Hence, we propose ORCHNet, a deep-learning-based approach that maps 3D-LiDAR scans to global descriptors. Specifically, this work proposes a new global feature aggregation approach, which fuses multiple aggregation methods into a robust global descriptor. ORCHNet is evaluated on real-world data collected in orchards, comprising data from the summer and autumn seasons. To assess the robustness, We compare ORCHNet with state-of-the-art aggregation approaches on data from the same season and across seasons.

Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.00477

python3 train_knn.py --dataset tempo_vine_v --cfg sensor-cfg_TVINE