382 research outputs found
Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)consists in the concurrent
construction of a model of the environment (the map), and the estimation of the
state of the robot moving within it. The SLAM community has made astonishing
progress over the last 30 years, enabling large-scale real-world applications,
and witnessing a steady transition of this technology to industry. We survey
the current state of SLAM. We start by presenting what is now the de-facto
standard formulation for SLAM. We then review related work, covering a broad
set of topics including robustness and scalability in long-term mapping, metric
and semantic representations for mapping, theoretical performance guarantees,
active SLAM and exploration, and other new frontiers. This paper simultaneously
serves as a position paper and tutorial to those who are users of SLAM. By
looking at the published research with a critical eye, we delineate open
challenges and new research issues, that still deserve careful scientific
investigation. The paper also contains the authors' take on two questions that
often animate discussions during robotics conferences: Do robots need SLAM? and
Is SLAM solved
Accelerating Globally Optimal Consensus Maximization in Geometric Vision
Branch-and-bound-based consensus maximization stands out due to its important
ability of retrieving the globally optimal solution to outlier-affected
geometric problems. However, while the discovery of such solutions caries high
scientific value, its application in practical scenarios is often prohibited by
its computational complexity growing exponentially as a function of the
dimensionality of the problem at hand. In this work, we convey a novel, general
technique that allows us to branch over an dimensional space for an
n-dimensional problem. The remaining degree of freedom can be solved globally
optimally within each bound calculation by applying the efficient interval
stabbing technique. While each individual bound derivation is harder to compute
owing to the additional need for solving a sorting problem, the reduced number
of intervals and tighter bounds in practice lead to a significant reduction in
the overall number of required iterations. Besides an abstract introduction of
the approach, we present applications to three fundamental geometric computer
vision problems: camera resectioning, relative camera pose estimation, and
point set registration. Through our exhaustive tests, we demonstrate
significant speed-up factors at times exceeding two orders of magnitude,
thereby increasing the viability of globally optimal consensus maximizers in
online application scenarios
SLAM: Decentralized and Distributed Collaborative Visual-inertial SLAM System for Aerial Swarm
In recent years, aerial swarm technology has developed rapidly. In order to
accomplish a fully autonomous aerial swarm, a key technology is decentralized
and distributed collaborative SLAM (CSLAM) for aerial swarms, which estimates
the relative pose and the consistent global trajectories. In this paper, we
propose SLAM: a decentralized and distributed () collaborative SLAM
algorithm. This algorithm has high local accuracy and global consistency, and
the distributed architecture allows it to scale up. SLAM covers swarm
state estimation in two scenarios: near-field state estimation for high
real-time accuracy at close range and far-field state estimation for globally
consistent trajectories estimation at the long-range between UAVs. Distributed
optimization algorithms are adopted as the backend to achieve the goal.
SLAM is robust to transient loss of communication, network delays, and
other factors. Thanks to the flexible architecture, SLAM has the potential
of applying in various scenarios
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Towards secure & robust PNT for automated systems
This dissertation makes four contributions in support of secure and robust position, navigation, and timing (PNT) for automated systems. The first two relate to PNT security while the latter two address robust positioning for automated ground vehicles.
The first contribution is a fundamental theory for provably-secure clock synchronization between two agents in a distributed automated system. All one-way synchronization protocols, such as those based on the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), are shown to be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle delay attacks. This contribution is the first to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for provably secure clock synchronization.
The second contribution, also related to PNT security, is a three-year study of the world-wide GPS interference landscape based on data from a dual-frequency GNSS receiver operating continuously on the International Space Station (ISS). This work is the first publicly-reported space-based survey of GNSS interference, and unveils previously-unreported GNSS interference activity.
The third contribution is a novel ground vehicle positioning technique that is robust to GNSS signal blockage, poor lighting conditions, and adverse weather events such as heavy rain and dense fog. The technique relies on sensors that are commonly available on automated vehicles and are insensitive to lighting and inclement weather: automotive radar, low-cost inertial measurement units (IMUs), and GNSS. Remarkably, it is shown that, given a prior radar map, the proposed technique operating on data from off-the-shelf all-weather automotive sensors can maintain sub-50-cm horizontal position accuracy during 60 min of GNSS-denied driving in downtown Austin, TX.
This dissertationâs final contribution is an analysis and demonstration of the feasibility of crowd-sourced digital mapping for automated vehicles. Localization techniques, such as the one described in the previous contribution, rely on such digital maps for accuracy and robustness. A key enabler for large-scale up-to-date maps is enlisting the help of the very consumer vehicles that need the map to build and update it. A method for fusing multi-session vision data into a unified digital map is developed. The asymptotic limit of such a mapâs globally-referenced position accuracy is explored for the case in which the mapping agents rely on low-cost GNSS receivers performing standard code-phase-based navigation. Experimental validation along a semi-urban route shows that low-cost consumer vehicles incrementally tighten the accuracy of the jointly-optimized digital map over time enough to support sub-lane-level positioning in a global frame of reference.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
A Survey on Global LiDAR Localization
Knowledge about the own pose is key for all mobile robot applications. Thus
pose estimation is part of the core functionalities of mobile robots. In the
last two decades, LiDAR scanners have become a standard sensor for robot
localization and mapping. This article surveys recent progress and advances in
LiDAR-based global localization. We start with the problem formulation and
explore the application scope. We then present the methodology review covering
various global localization topics, such as maps, descriptor extraction, and
consistency checks. The contents are organized under three themes. The first is
the combination of global place retrieval and local pose estimation. Then the
second theme is upgrading single-shot measurement to sequential ones for
sequential global localization. The third theme is extending single-robot
global localization to cross-robot localization on multi-robot systems. We end
this survey with a discussion of open challenges and promising directions on
global lidar localization
Present and Future of SLAM in Extreme Underground Environments
This paper reports on the state of the art in underground SLAM by discussing
different SLAM strategies and results across six teams that participated in the
three-year-long SubT competition. In particular, the paper has four main goals.
First, we review the algorithms, architectures, and systems adopted by the
teams; particular emphasis is put on lidar-centric SLAM solutions (the go-to
approach for virtually all teams in the competition), heterogeneous multi-robot
operation (including both aerial and ground robots), and real-world underground
operation (from the presence of obscurants to the need to handle tight
computational constraints). We do not shy away from discussing the dirty
details behind the different SubT SLAM systems, which are often omitted from
technical papers. Second, we discuss the maturity of the field by highlighting
what is possible with the current SLAM systems and what we believe is within
reach with some good systems engineering. Third, we outline what we believe are
fundamental open problems, that are likely to require further research to break
through. Finally, we provide a list of open-source SLAM implementations and
datasets that have been produced during the SubT challenge and related efforts,
and constitute a useful resource for researchers and practitioners.Comment: 21 pages including references. This survey paper is submitted to IEEE
Transactions on Robotics for pre-approva
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