5,794 research outputs found
Topomap: Topological Mapping and Navigation Based on Visual SLAM Maps
Visual robot navigation within large-scale, semi-structured environments
deals with various challenges such as computation intensive path planning
algorithms or insufficient knowledge about traversable spaces. Moreover, many
state-of-the-art navigation approaches only operate locally instead of gaining
a more conceptual understanding of the planning objective. This limits the
complexity of tasks a robot can accomplish and makes it harder to deal with
uncertainties that are present in the context of real-time robotics
applications. In this work, we present Topomap, a framework which simplifies
the navigation task by providing a map to the robot which is tailored for path
planning use. This novel approach transforms a sparse feature-based map from a
visual Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) system into a
three-dimensional topological map. This is done in two steps. First, we extract
occupancy information directly from the noisy sparse point cloud. Then, we
create a set of convex free-space clusters, which are the vertices of the
topological map. We show that this representation improves the efficiency of
global planning, and we provide a complete derivation of our algorithm.
Planning experiments on real world datasets demonstrate that we achieve similar
performance as RRT* with significantly lower computation times and storage
requirements. Finally, we test our algorithm on a mobile robotic platform to
prove its advantages.Comment: 8 page
V2V-PoseNet: Voxel-to-Voxel Prediction Network for Accurate 3D Hand and Human Pose Estimation from a Single Depth Map
Most of the existing deep learning-based methods for 3D hand and human pose
estimation from a single depth map are based on a common framework that takes a
2D depth map and directly regresses the 3D coordinates of keypoints, such as
hand or human body joints, via 2D convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The
first weakness of this approach is the presence of perspective distortion in
the 2D depth map. While the depth map is intrinsically 3D data, many previous
methods treat depth maps as 2D images that can distort the shape of the actual
object through projection from 3D to 2D space. This compels the network to
perform perspective distortion-invariant estimation. The second weakness of the
conventional approach is that directly regressing 3D coordinates from a 2D
image is a highly non-linear mapping, which causes difficulty in the learning
procedure. To overcome these weaknesses, we firstly cast the 3D hand and human
pose estimation problem from a single depth map into a voxel-to-voxel
prediction that uses a 3D voxelized grid and estimates the per-voxel likelihood
for each keypoint. We design our model as a 3D CNN that provides accurate
estimates while running in real-time. Our system outperforms previous methods
in almost all publicly available 3D hand and human pose estimation datasets and
placed first in the HANDS 2017 frame-based 3D hand pose estimation challenge.
The code is available in https://github.com/mks0601/V2V-PoseNet_RELEASE.Comment: HANDS 2017 Challenge Frame-based 3D Hand Pose Estimation Winner (ICCV
2017), Published at CVPR 201
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
A survey on real-time 3D scene reconstruction with SLAM methods in embedded systems
The 3D reconstruction of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is an
important topic in the field for transport systems such as drones, service
robots and mobile AR/VR devices. Compared to a point cloud representation, the
3D reconstruction based on meshes and voxels is particularly useful for
high-level functions, like obstacle avoidance or interaction with the physical
environment. This article reviews the implementation of a visual-based 3D scene
reconstruction pipeline on resource-constrained hardware platforms. Real-time
performances, memory management and low power consumption are critical for
embedded systems. A conventional SLAM pipeline from sensors to 3D
reconstruction is described, including the potential use of deep learning. The
implementation of advanced functions with limited resources is detailed. Recent
systems propose the embedded implementation of 3D reconstruction methods with
different granularities. The trade-off between required accuracy and resource
consumption for real-time localization and reconstruction is one of the open
research questions identified and discussed in this paper
Learning to See the Wood for the Trees: Deep Laser Localization in Urban and Natural Environments on a CPU
Localization in challenging, natural environments such as forests or
woodlands is an important capability for many applications from guiding a robot
navigating along a forest trail to monitoring vegetation growth with handheld
sensors. In this work we explore laser-based localization in both urban and
natural environments, which is suitable for online applications. We propose a
deep learning approach capable of learning meaningful descriptors directly from
3D point clouds by comparing triplets (anchor, positive and negative examples).
The approach learns a feature space representation for a set of segmented point
clouds that are matched between a current and previous observations. Our
learning method is tailored towards loop closure detection resulting in a small
model which can be deployed using only a CPU. The proposed learning method
would allow the full pipeline to run on robots with limited computational
payload such as drones, quadrupeds or UGVs.Comment: Accepted for publication at RA-L/ICRA 2019. More info:
https://ori.ox.ac.uk/esm-localizatio
Active Mapping and Robot Exploration: A Survey
Simultaneous localization and mapping responds to the problem of building a map of the environment without any prior information and based on the data obtained from one or more sensors. In most situations, the robot is driven by a human operator, but some systems are capable of navigating autonomously while mapping, which is called native simultaneous localization and mapping. This strategy focuses on actively calculating the trajectories to explore the environment while building a map with a minimum error. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the research work developed in this field is provided, targeting the most relevant contributions in indoor mobile robotics.This research was funded by the ELKARTEK project ELKARBOT KK-2020/00092 of the Basque Government
Evaluation of RGB-D SLAM in Large Indoor Environments
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is one of the key components of
a control system that aims to ensure autonomous navigation of a mobile robot in
unknown environments. In a variety of practical cases a robot might need to
travel long distances in order to accomplish its mission. This requires
long-term work of SLAM methods and building large maps. Consequently the
computational burden (including high memory consumption for map storage)
becomes a bottleneck. Indeed, state-of-the-art SLAM algorithms include specific
techniques and optimizations to tackle this challenge, still their performance
in long-term scenarios needs proper assessment. To this end, we perform an
empirical evaluation of two widespread state-of-the-art RGB-D SLAM methods,
suitable for long-term navigation, i.e. RTAB-Map and Voxgraph. We evaluate them
in a large simulated indoor environment, consisting of corridors and halls,
while varying the odometer noise for a more realistic setup. We provide both
qualitative and quantitative analysis of both methods uncovering their
strengths and weaknesses. We find that both methods build a high-quality map
with low odometry noise but tend to fail with high odometry noise. Voxgraph has
lower relative trajectory estimation error and memory consumption than
RTAB-Map, while its absolute error is higher.Comment: This is a pre-print of the paper accepted to ICR 2022 conferenc
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