Keyframe-based monocular SLAM: design, survey, and future directions

Extensive research in the field of monocular SLAM for the past fifteen years has yielded workable systems that found their way into various applications in robotics and augmented reality. Although filter-based monocular SLAM systems were common at some time, the more efficient keyframe-based solutions are becoming the de facto methodology for building a monocular SLAM system. The objective of this paper is threefold: first, the paper serves as a guideline for people seeking to design their own monocular SLAM according to specific environmental constraints. Second, it presents a survey that covers the various keyframe-based monocular SLAM systems in the literature, detailing the components of their implementation, and critically assessing the specific strategies made in each proposed solution. Third, the paper provides insight into the direction of future research in this field, to address the major limitations still facing monocular SLAM; namely, in the issues of illumination changes, initialization, highly dynamic motion, poorly textured scenes, repetitive textures, map maintenance, and failure recovery

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

Multi-Session Visual SLAM for Illumination Invariant Localization in Indoor Environments

For robots navigating using only a camera, illumination changes in indoor environments can cause localization failures during autonomous navigation. In this paper, we present a multi-session visual SLAM approach to create a map made of multiple variations of the same locations in different illumination conditions. The multi-session map can then be used at any hour of the day for improved localization capability. The approach presented is independent of the visual features used, and this is demonstrated by comparing localization performance between multi-session maps created using the RTAB-Map library with SURF, SIFT, BRIEF, FREAK, BRISK, KAZE, DAISY and SuperPoint visual features. The approach is tested on six mapping and six localization sessions recorded at 30 minutes intervals during sunset using a Google Tango phone in a real apartment.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Map Management Approach for SLAM in Large-Scale Indoor and Outdoor Areas

This work presents a semantic map management approach for various environments by triggering multiple maps with different simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) configurations. A modular map structure allows to add, modify or delete maps without influencing other maps of different areas. The hierarchy level of our algorithm is above the utilized SLAM method. Evaluating laser scan data (e.g. the detection of passing a doorway) triggers a new map, automatically choosing the appropriate SLAM configuration from a manually predefined list. Single independent maps are connected by link-points, which are located in an overlapping zone of both maps, enabling global navigation over several maps. Loop- closures between maps are detected by an appearance-based method, using feature matching and iterative closest point (ICP) registration between point clouds. Based on the arrangement of maps and link-points, a topological graph is extracted for navigation purpose and tracking the global robot's position over several maps. Our approach is evaluated by mapping a university campus with multiple indoor and outdoor areas and abstracting a metrical-topological graph. It is compared to a single map running with different SLAM configurations. Our approach enhances the overall map quality compared to the single map approaches by automatically choosing predefined SLAM configurations for different environmental setups

Visual Place Recognition: A Tutorial

Localization is an essential capability for mobile robots. A rapidly growing field of research in this area is Visual Place Recognition (VPR), which is the ability to recognize previously seen places in the world based solely on images. This present work is the first tutorial paper on visual place recognition. It unifies the terminology of VPR and complements prior research in two important directions: 1) It provides a systematic introduction for newcomers to the field, covering topics such as the formulation of the VPR problem, a general-purpose algorithmic pipeline, an evaluation methodology for VPR approaches, and the major challenges for VPR and how they may be addressed. 2) As a contribution for researchers acquainted with the VPR problem, it examines the intricacies of different VPR problem types regarding input, data processing, and output. The tutorial also discusses the subtleties behind the evaluation of VPR algorithms, e.g., the evaluation of a VPR system that has to find all matching database images per query, as opposed to just a single match. Practical code examples in Python illustrate to prospective practitioners and researchers how VPR is implemented and evaluated.Comment: IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (RAM