No Arabic abstract
Map-centric SLAM is emerging as an alternative of conventional graph-based SLAM for its accuracy and efficiency in long-term mapping problems. However, in map-centric SLAM, the process of loop closure differs from that of conventional SLAM and the result of incorrect loop closure is more destructive and is not reversible. In this paper, we present a tightly coupled photogeometric metric localization for the loop closure problem in map-centric SLAM. In particular, our method combines complementary constraints from LiDAR and camera sensors, and validates loop closure candidates with sequential observations. The proposed method provides a visual evidence-based outlier rejection where failures caused by either place recognition or localization outliers can be effectively removed. We demonstrate the proposed method is not only more accurate than the conventional global ICP methods but is also robust to incorrect initial pose guesses.
Map-centric SLAM utilizes elasticity as a means of loop closure. This approach reduces the cost of loop closure while still provides large-scale fusion-based dense maps, when compared to the trajectory-centric SLAM approaches. In this paper, we present a novel framework for 3D LiDAR-based map-centric SLAM. Having the advantages of a map-centric approach, our method exhibits new features to overcome the shortcomings of existing systems, associated with multi-modal sensor fusion and LiDAR motion distortion. This is accomplished through the use of a local Continuous-Time (CT) trajectory representation. Also, our surface resolution preservative matching algorithm and Wishart-based surfel fusion model enables non-redundant yet dense mapping. Furthermore, we present a robust metric loop closure model to make the approach stable regardless of where the loop closure occurs. Finally, we demonstrate our approach through both simulation and real data experiments using multiple sensor payload configurations and environments to illustrate its utility and robustness.
Localization, or position fixing, is an important problem in robotics research. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for long-term localization in a changing environment using 3D LiDAR. We first create the map of a real environment using GPS and LiDAR. Then, we divide the map into several small parts as the targets for cloud registration, which can not only improve the robustness but also reduce the registration time. PointLocalization allows us to fuse different kinds of odometers, which can optimize the accuracy and frequency of localization results. We evaluate our algorithm on an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) using LiDAR and a wheel encoder, and obtain the localization results at more than 20 Hz after fusion. The algorithm can also localize the UGV in a 180-degree field of view (FOV). Using an outdated map captured six months ago, this algorithm shows great robustness, and the test results show that it can achieve an accuracy of 10 cm. PointLocalization has been tested for a period of more than six months in a crowded factory and has operated successfully over a distance of more than 2000 km.
Map based visual inertial localization is a crucial step to reduce the drift in state estimation of mobile robots. The underlying problem for localization is to estimate the pose from a set of 3D-2D feature correspondences, of which the main challenge is the presence of outliers, especially in changing environment. In this paper, we propose a robust solution based on efficient global optimization of the consensus maximization problem, which is insensitive to high percentage of outliers. We first introduce translation invariant measurements (TIMs) for both points and lines to decouple the consensus maximization problem into rotation and translation subproblems, allowing for a two-stage solver with reduced solution dimensions. Then we show that (i) the rotation can be calculated by minimizing TIMs using only 1-dimensional branch-and-bound (BnB), (ii) the translation can be found by running 1-dimensional search for three times with prioritized progressive voting. Compared with the popular randomized solver, our solver achieves deterministic global convergence without depending on an initial value. While compared with existing BnB based methods, ours is exponentially faster. Finally, by evaluating the performance on both simulation and real-world datasets, our approach gives accurate pose even when there are 90% outliers (only 2 inliers).
Loop closure detection is an essential component of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems, which reduces the drift accumulated over time. Over the years, several deep learning approaches have been proposed to address this task, however their performance has been subpar compared to handcrafted techniques, especially while dealing with reverse loops. In this paper, we introduce the novel LCDNet that effectively detects loop closures in LiDAR point clouds by simultaneously identifying previously visited places and estimating the 6-DoF relative transformation between the current scan and the map. LCDNet is composed of a shared encoder, a place recognition head that extracts global descriptors, and a relative pose head that estimates the transformation between two point clouds. We introduce a novel relative pose head based on the unbalanced optimal transport theory that we implement in a differentiable manner to allow for end-to-end training. Extensive evaluations of LCDNet on multiple real-world autonomous driving datasets show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art loop closure detection and point cloud registration techniques by a large margin, especially while dealing with reverse loops. Moreover, we integrate our proposed loop closure detection approach into a LiDAR SLAM library to provide a complete mapping system and demonstrate the generalization ability using different sensor setup in an unseen city.
The growing popularity of autonomous systems creates a need for reliable and efficient metric pose retrieval algorithms. Currently used approaches tend to rely on nearest neighbor search of binary descriptors to perform the 2D-3D matching and guarantee realtime capabilities on mobile platforms. These methods struggle, however, with the growing size of the map, changes in viewpoint or appearance, and visual aliasing present in the environment. The rigidly defined descriptor patterns only capture a limited neighborhood of the keypoint and completely ignore the overall visual context. We propose LandmarkBoost - an approach that, in contrast to the conventional 2D-3D matching methods, casts the search problem as a landmark classification task. We use a boosted classifier to classify landmark observations and directly obtain correspondences as classifier scores. We also introduce a formulation of visual context that is flexible, efficient to compute, and can capture relationships in the entire image plane. The original binary descriptors are augmented with contextual information and informative features are selected by the boosting framework. Through detailed experiments, we evaluate the retrieval quality and performance of LandmarkBoost, demonstrating that it outperforms common state-of-the-art descriptor matching methods.