EverySync: An Open Hardware Time Synchronization Sensor Suite for Common Sensors in SLAM

Abstract

Multi-sensor fusion systems have been widely applied in various fields, including mobile robot, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and autonomous driving. For a tightly coupled multi-sensor fusion system, strict time synchronization between sensors will improve the accuracy of the system. However, there is currently a lack of open-source and general-purpose hardware synchronization systems for Cameras, IMUs, LiDARs, GNSS/RTK in the academic community. Therefore, we propose EverySync, an open hardware time synchronization system to address this gap. The synchronization accuracy of the system was evaluated through multiple experiments, achieving an accuracy of less than 1 ms. And, real-world experiments proved that hardware time synchronization improves the accuracy of the SLAM system. This open-source system is available on GitHub.