Distro	Build dev	Release
ROS 2 Humble (u22.04)
ROS 2 Jazzy (u24.04)
ROS 2 Rolling (u24.04)

EOL Distro	Last Release
ROS 2 Iron (u22.04)

MOLA

A Modular Optimization framework for Localization and mApping (MOLA). This repository contains the base open-sourced packages for the MOLA project. Other packages exist under the MOLAorg organization.

Refer to the official documentation for build instructions, demos, API reference, etc.

ROSCon Talk introducing MOLA

Video (Slides):

Individual package build status

Note: Rows within each cell are for amd64 and arm64 architectures.

Package	ROS 2 Humble BinBuild	ROS 2 Jazzy BinBuild	ROS 2 Rolling BinBuild
kitti_metrics_eval
mola
mola_bridge_ros2
mola_demos
mola_input_euroc_dataset
mola_input_kitti360_dataset
mola_input_kitti_dataset
mola_input_mulran_dataset
mola_input_paris_luco_dataset
mola_input_rawlog
mola_input_rosbag2
mola_kernel
mola_launcher
mola_metric_maps
mola_msgs
mola_pose_list
mola_relocalization
mola_traj_tools
mola_viz
mola_yaml

Citations

The latest publications on MOLA are (ArXiV).

@article{blanco2025mola_lo,
    author = {Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco},
    title ={A flexible framework for accurate LiDAR odometry, map manipulation, and localization},
    journal = {The International Journal of Robotics Research},
    volume = {0},
    number = {0},
    pages = {02783649251316881},
    year = {2025},
    doi = {10.1177/02783649251316881},
    URL = { https://doi.org/10.1177/02783649251316881},
    eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1177/02783649251316881},
}

MOLA was initially presented in 2019 in (PDF):

@INPROCEEDINGS{Blanco-Claraco-RSS-19, 
    AUTHOR    = {Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco}, 
    TITLE     = {A Modular Optimization Framework for Localization and Mapping}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2019}, 
    ADDRESS   = {FreiburgimBreisgau, Germany}, 
    MONTH     = {June}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2019.XV.043} 
} 

License

MOLA is released under the GNU GPL v3 license, except noted otherwise in each individual module. Other options available upon request. Some modules are released under BSD-3. See the official documentation.

Star History