Beluga: A Modern Monte Carlo Localization Package for ROS and ROS 2

We present beluga_amcl, a novel Robot Operating System (ROS) localization package that implements Adaptive Monte Carlo localization (AMCL), one of the most widely used algorithms for map-based localization in the ROS navigation stack. The beluga_amcl package is fully compatible with the long-known and widely used nav2_amcl package, but stands out in that it was designed from the ground-up to be high-quality, production grade open-source software, in line with current expectations of the ROS 2 community. In this paper we demonstrate that beluga_amcl is a robust and performant implementation of the features in nav2_amcl, and that it can thus be considered a suitable functional replacement for it. This provides the ROS community with a modern, high-quality, and backwards-compatible MCL package that can be a basis for further extension.