NODEDC_MISSION_CORE/docs/adr/0018-lidar-evidence-before-models.md

ADR 0018: qualify LiDAR evidence before selecting accelerated models

Date: 2026-07-25 Status: accepted

Context

Mission Core preserves K1 point clouds, poses, cameras and factory calibration and already runs an external NVIDIA worker for camera perception. The next candidate components include PointPillars, CenterPoint, Patchwork++, nvblox and several LiDAR SLAM systems.

Those components do not share the same input assumptions. The current K1 lio_pcl source is a vendor-mapped increment in the canonical map frame with intensity and a separate best-effort pose. It is not an unregistered sweep and exposes no admitted ring, per-point time or IMU stream. The accepted E10 replay pack also drops intensity.

Installing a component without expressing those facts would let runtime success be mistaken for geometric validity.

Decision

1. Mission Core owns a versioned, provider-neutral missioncore.lidar-evidence-profile/v1.
2. Each processing stage receives a deterministic readiness result with explicit blockers.
3. Existing content-addressed replay schemas are immutable. A lossless replay improvement is a new version.
4. The first detector seam consumes sensor-frame XYZI. Map-frame K1 points are converted only with the bound T_map_from_lidar pose, and verified uint8 intensity is normalized to [0, 1].
5. Missing ring, point time, scan geometry or IMU evidence remains missing. It is never synthesized to satisfy a model.
6. Accelerated models remain external worker providers. React consumes reports, overlays and world-state products; it does not host CUDA/TensorRT/ROS 2 compute.
7. All LiDAR results remain diagnostic/shadow until separate navigation and safety gates pass.

Consequences

• PointPillars integration is blocked for replay pack v1 and degraded for the current live vendor-mapped source.
• Nvblox is blocked until the LiDAR scan geometry and timing/pose contract are admitted.
• LiDAR odometry and LiDAR-inertial SLAM are blocked for current K1 evidence.
• L1 lossless replay and scanner-quality telemetry are implemented and precede new model installs.
• Future scanners, simulation providers and datasets can use the same readiness contract without being forced into K1-specific code.

References

The detailed product rationale, market review, gates and sequence are in docs/13_LIDAR_WORKER_PRODUCT_AND_ROADMAP.md.