Short-time laser scan disconnection caused big distortion in map building

[paszoujp]

Hello, I was using the Hokuyo UST-20LX range scanner to build a map. But there's a problem with this scanner: every few ten minutes (some say 3-5min, it depends), it will disconnect for a few seconds with an error saying "Could not grab a single scan", and then reconnect after a few seconds.
see this issue
This was not a big problem when we used Gmapping, because when the scan data was off line, the odometry will still keep track of the robot pose and let the scan data catch up later.
But when using cartographer, the sudden disconnection of the laser scan seems to pause the whole motion tracking system. When the laser data is offline, the robot pose in cartographer will cease to update, even if the robot is still moving, and the robot will be at the same location even after the lase data came back online, when its position has changed in the real world.
The result is, if the laser scan disconnected when our robot was moving, the robot will be in a totally wrong position and it is almost impossible for cartographer to fix it especially when the robot was rotating during the 'blank out'.
We are still working on fixing the laser disconnection issue, but would it be better if you take in the situation when the laser scanner occasionally shut down? After all this could happen in other brand of laser scanners.