OctoCache: Caching Voxels for Accelerating 3D Occupancy Mapping in Autonomous Systems
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: 3D mapping systems are crucial for creating digital representations of physical environments, widely used in autonomous robot navigation, 3D visualization, and AR/VR. This paper focuses on OctoMap, a leading 3D mapping framework using an octree-based structure for spatial efficiency. However, OctoMap's performance is limited by slow updates due to costly memory accesses. We introduce OctoCache, a software system that accelerates OctoMap through (1) optimized cache memory access, (2) refined voxel ordering, and (3) workflow parallelization. OctoCache achieves speedups of 45.63%~88.01% in 3D environment construction tasks compared to standard OctoMap. Deployed in UAV navigation scenarios, OctoCache demonstrates up to 3.02× speedup and reduces mission completion time by up to 28%. These results highlight OctoCache's potential to enhance 3D mapping efficiency in autonomous navigation, advancing robotics and environmental modeling.
Authors: Peiqing Chen, Minghao Li, Zishen Wan, Yu-Shun Hsiao, Minlan Yu, Vijay Janapa Reddi, Zaoxing Liu
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Universitas Brawijaya
Award: G8326576750
OpenAlex ID: W4408901947