PadLoc: Training-Free Floor-Plan Localization by Sparse Geometric Matching

Marian Bookhahn, Frank Neumann

We propose PadLoc, a training-free localization back-end that places a moving sensor within a known floor plan. Floor plans are cheap, persistent, and robust to appearance change, but recent learned-depth methods localize against them by filtering per-frame depth through dense $(x,y,θ)$ pose grids. PadLoc keeps the swappable depth front-end and replaces the dense grid back-end with sparse geometric matching: dominant wall orientations define a small pose-candidate set, masked normalized cross-correlation scores observed free space against the plan, and a moving-pose Gaussian-mixture Bayes filter plus consensus readout decodes the trajectory. Holding each competitor's depth fixed, PadLoc matches or beats UnLoc's forward filter and the F3Loc filter at every Gibson trajectory length, and UnLoc's offline refinement from $T=35$ on; it exceeds Z-FLoc's published results with a shared MapAnything front-end. On Bonn LiLocBench, PadLoc improves pooled SR@1m over UnLoc by 23-32 pp under wheel odometry and 35-43 pp with ground-truth motion; with full-FOV LiDAR plus wheel odometry the same readout reaches 100% SR@1m at 9-10 cm median error on the static sequence. On the Hilti-Trimble…