  We present a real-time LiDAR-Inertial-Camera SLAM system with 3D Gaussian
Splatting as the mapping backend. Leveraging robust pose estimates from our
LiDAR-Inertial-Camera odometry, Coco-LIC, an incremental photo-realistic
mapping system is proposed in this paper. We initialize 3D Gaussians from
colorized LiDAR points and optimize them using differentiable rendering powered
by 3D Gaussian Splatting. Meticulously designed strategies are employed to
incrementally expand the Gaussian map and adaptively control its density,
ensuring high-quality mapping with real-time capability. Experiments conducted
in diverse scenarios demonstrate the superior performance of our method
compared to existing radiance-field-based SLAM systems.
