RKO-LIO
- Software
- Navigation and mapping
- Library
RKO-LIO is a LiDAR-inertial odometry system that estimates a sensor's motion from LiDAR and IMU data, without sensor-specific modelling. It runs as a Python package or a ROS package.
Made by Photogrammetry & Robotics Bonn, Germany (checked on github.com/PRBonn (opens in a new tab)).
Source on GitHub: github.com/PRBonn/rko_lio (opens in a new tab). Facts read at commit b89f97a (opens in a new tab).
Licenses
- Code
- MIT (opens in a new tab)
Read by Robotheca from LICENSE (opens in a new tab) (MIT) at commit b89f97a (opens in a new tab), on 16 Oct 2026.
- Commercial use
- Yes
What it does
- Estimates motion by fusing LiDAR and inertial measurements, aiming to work across different sensors and platforms without tuning per sensor.
- Installable from PyPI as the rko_lio package and runnable on ROS bags (ROS1 or ROS2) that contain a TF tree.
- Requires the IMU-to-base and LiDAR-to-base extrinsics, read automatically from the data or set through a config file.
- Offers an optional Rerun-based visualizer enabled with the -v flag.
- Provides a ROS launch file with autodetection of topics and frames, which can be disabled to set them manually.
- Supports ROS distributions Humble, Jazzy, Kilted, Lyrical and Rolling; drift correction is offered separately by rko_slam.
Written by Robotheca from the project's README (opens in a new tab) at commit b89f97a.
Getting started
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- How to start
- The project's website (opens in a new tab)
Maintenance
- Status
- Active: a commit in the last 90 days
- Newest commit
- 13 Oct 2026 on master
- Latest release
- v0.4.0 (1 Sept 2026)
Checked on GitHub on 16 Oct 2026.
Links
Robots on Robotheca that use it
No robot on Robotheca is linked to it yet. Links come from a robot's robot.yaml, from its dependency files read as text, or from Robotheca's editors.
Robotheca lists software as a reference: nothing is hosted or run here, and every fact links to where it was read.