LIV-Eye: A Low-Cost LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Fusion 3D Sensor for Robotics and Embodied AI [中文]

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Table of Contents

• Highlights
• Repository Structure
• Bill of Materials (BOM)
• Assembly
• Wiring
• Driver Installation and Run
• LiDAR-Camera Joint Calibration
• Running FAST-LIVO2
• Platform Adaptability
• Acknowledgements
• License

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Highlights

One sentence summary: A ~¥5000 (≈ $700) fully open-source hardware/software LiDAR-Inertial-Visual fusion perception kit. ⚙️ Easy assembly, no soldering, one-click reproducibility. 🐳 Supports ROS1/ROS2 and Docker, 🧭 full calibration workflow (intrinsic/extrinsic/time sync), 🧰 compatible with FAST-LIVO2 algorithms, and delivers colored point cloud and odometry results in just 5 minutes.

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Repository Structure

├── FAST-LIVO2-Mid360-Config - The configuration and launch files of FAST-LIVO2 for the Mid-360 LiDAR
├── liv_eye_cad - Solidworks files for LIV-Eye
├── livox_ros_driver2 - Livox LiDAR ROS driver
├── mvs_ros_driver - Hikvision Camera ROS driver
└── README.md - Project homepage
└── ...

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Bill of Materials (BOM)

Target total cost: ≈ ¥5,000 (≈ $700, subject to actual purchase)

Category	Model/Name	Reference Price	Image
LiDAR	Livox Mid-360	¥3999 (≈ $560)
Camera	Hikvision MV-CU013-A0UC	¥700 (≈ $100)
Lens	Hikvision MVL-HF0628M-6MPE	¥150 (≈ $20)
Wire	LiDAR-Camera Hardware Synchronizer	¥500 (≈ $70)
Battery	12V DC Battery	¥99 (≈ $15)

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Assembly

Solidworks CAD files are provided in liv_eye_cad.
You can download and use them for 3D printing and assembly:

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Wiring

The diagram below shows the complete wiring of LIV-Eye, in just six steps:

Note
If you do not need to use the LiDAR-Camera hardware synchronizer, please refer to the connection method and STM32 hardware synchronization solution in LIV_handhold.

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Driver Installation and Run

1. Download and install MVS and Livox-SDK2. Set the camera to trigger mode in MVS.

2. Install the camera ROS driver mvs_ros_driver and launch in trigger mode:

roslaunch mvs_ros_driver mvs_camera_trigger.launch 

3. Install and launch the LiDAR ROS driver livox_ros_driver2:

roslaunch livox_ros_driver2 msg_MID360.launch

4. Record sensor data:

rosbag record /livox/lidar /livox/imu /left_camera/image

Note
The mvs_ros_driver and livox_ros_driver2 are the same as those in LIV_handhold, and include modifications to support millisecond-level hardware synchronization.

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LiDAR-Camera Joint Calibration

1. Calibrate camera intrinsics. e.g. matlab.
2. Use FAST-Calib for LiDAR–camera extrinsic calibration.

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Running FAST-LIVO2

Install FAST-LIVO2. The configuration and launch files for the Mid-360 are provided in FAST-LIVO2-Mid360-Config. Update the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters to match your device, then run:

roslaunch fast_livo mapping_mid360.launch

This demo corresponds to the example LIV-Eye rosbag, which can be downloaded here.

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Platform Adaptability

LIV-Eye is compact yet versatile! With its small form factor, standardized wiring, and open-source software, it can be seamlessly integrated into a wide range of robotic platforms to enable perception, navigation, and embodied AI research.

Acknowledgements

This project is based on the following open-source projects:

• Driver and time synchronization: LIV_handhold
• Calibration method: FAST-Calib
• Algorithm: FAST-LIVO2
• CAD Design: Link by pcl5

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License

The source code is released under the GPLv2 license.

If you use this codebase in academic research, please cite any of the following papers:

[1] Zheng, Chunran, et al. "FAST-LIVO2: Fast, Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry." 
[2] Zheng, Chunran, et al. "FAST-LIVO: Fast and Tightly-coupled Sparse-Direct LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Odometry." 
[3] Zheng, Chunran, et al. "FAST-Calib: LiDAR-Camera Extrinsic Calibration in One Second." 
[4] Ziming, Wang, et al. "USTC FLICAR: A sensors fusion dataset of LiDAR-inertial-camera for heavy-duty autonomous aerial work robots."