Computationally efficient algorithm for vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping of mobile robots

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1217-1239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen-Chien Hsu ◽  
Cheng-Kai Yang ◽  
Yi-Hsing Chien ◽  
Yin-Tien Wang ◽  
Wei-Yen Wang ◽  
...  

Purpose FastSLAM is a popular method to solve the problem of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). However, when the number of landmarks present in real environments increases, there are excessive comparisons of the measurement with all the existing landmarks in each particle. As a result, the execution speed will be too slow to achieve the objective of real-time navigation. Thus, this paper aims to improve the computational efficiency and estimation accuracy of conventional SLAM algorithms. Design/methodology/approach As an attempt to solve this problem, this paper presents a computationally efficient SLAM (CESLAM) algorithm, where odometer information is considered for updating the robot’s pose in particles. When a measurement has a maximum likelihood with the known landmark in the particle, the particle state is updated before updating the landmark estimates. Findings Simulation results show that the proposed CESLAM can overcome the problem of heavy computational burden while improving the accuracy of localization and mapping building. To practically evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a Pioneer 3-DX robot with a Kinect sensor is used to develop an RGB-D-based computationally efficient visual SLAM (CEVSLAM) based on Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF). Experimental results confirm that the proposed CEVSLAM system is capable of successfully estimating the robot pose and building the map with satisfactory accuracy. Originality/value The proposed CESLAM algorithm overcomes the problem of the time-consuming process because of unnecessary comparisons in existing FastSLAM algorithms. Simulations show that accuracy of robot pose and landmark estimation is greatly improved by the CESLAM. Combining CESLAM and SURF, the authors establish a CEVSLAM to significantly improve the estimation accuracy and computational efficiency. Practical experiments by using a Kinect visual sensor show that the variance and average error by using the proposed CEVSLAM are smaller than those by using the other visual SLAM algorithms.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianjun Ni ◽  
Tao Gong ◽  
Yafei Gu ◽  
Jinxiu Zhu ◽  
Xinnan Fan

The robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a very important and useful technology in the robotic field. However, the environmental map constructed by the traditional visual SLAM method contains little semantic information, which cannot satisfy the needs of complex applications. The semantic map can deal with this problem efficiently, which has become a research hot spot. This paper proposed an improved deep residual network- (ResNet-) based semantic SLAM method for monocular vision robots. In the proposed approach, an improved image matching algorithm based on feature points is presented, to enhance the anti-interference ability of the algorithm. Then, the robust feature point extraction method is adopted in the front-end module of the SLAM system, which can effectively reduce the probability of camera tracking loss. In addition, the improved key frame insertion method is introduced in the visual SLAM system to enhance the stability of the system during the turning and moving of the robot. Furthermore, an improved ResNet model is proposed to extract the semantic information of the environment to complete the construction of the semantic map of the environment. Finally, various experiments are conducted and the results show that the proposed method is effective.


Author(s):  
Lorenzo Fernández Rojo ◽  
Luis Paya ◽  
Francisco Amoros ◽  
Oscar Reinoso

Mobile robots have extended to many different environments, where they have to move autonomously to fulfill an assigned task. With this aim, it is necessary that the robot builds a model of the environment and estimates its position using this model. These two problems are often faced simultaneously. This process is known as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) and is very common since when a robot begins moving in a previously unknown environment it must start generating a model from the scratch while it estimates its position simultaneously. This chapter is focused on the use of computer vision to solve this problem. The main objective is to develop and test an algorithm to solve the SLAM problem using two sources of information: (1) the global appearance of omnidirectional images captured by a camera mounted on the mobile robot and (2) the robot internal odometry. A hybrid metric-topological approach is proposed to solve the SLAM problem.


Author(s):  
Tianmiao Wang ◽  
Chaolei Wang ◽  
Jianhong Liang ◽  
Yicheng Zhang

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a Rao–Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF) approach for the visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Design/methodology/approach – Measurements from inertial measurement unit, barometric altimeter and monocular camera are fused to estimate the state of the vehicle while building a feature map. In this SLAM framework, an extra factorization method is proposed to partition the vehicle model into subspaces as the internal and external states. The internal state is estimated by an extended Kalman filter (EKF). A particle filter is employed for the external state estimation and parallel EKFs are for the map management. Findings – Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach is more stable and accurate than other existing marginalized particle filter-based SLAM algorithms. Experiments are also carried out to verify the effectiveness of this SLAM method by comparing with a referential global positioning system/inertial navigation system. Originality/value – The main contribution of this paper is the theoretical derivation and experimental application of the Rao–Blackwellized visual SLAM algorithm with vehicle model partition for small UAVs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-609
Author(s):  
Qinghua Jiang

Purpose Building cost is an important part of construction projects, and its correct estimation has important guiding significance for the follow-up decision-making of construction units. Design/methodology/approach This study focused on the application of back-propagation (BP) neural network in the estimation of building cost. First, the influencing factors of building cost were analyzed. Six factors were selected as input of the estimation model. Then, a BP neural network estimation model was established and trained by ten samples. Findings According to the experimental results, it was found that the estimation model converged at about 85 times; compared with radial basis function (RBF), the estimation accuracy of the model was higher, and the average error was 5.54 per cent, showing a good reliability in cost estimation. Originality/value The results of this study provide a reliable basis for investment decision-making in the construction industry and also contribute to the further application of BP neural network in cost estimation.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (17) ◽  
pp. 4922
Author(s):  
Like Cao ◽  
Jie Ling ◽  
Xiaohui Xiao

Noise appears in images captured by real cameras. This paper studies the influence of noise on monocular feature-based visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). First, an open-source synthetic dataset with different noise levels is introduced in this paper. Then the images in the dataset are denoised using the Fast and Flexible Denoising convolutional neural Network (FFDNet); the matching performances of Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT), Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) and Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF (ORB) which are commonly used in feature-based SLAM are analyzed in comparison and the results show that ORB has a higher correct matching rate than that of SIFT and SURF, the denoised images have a higher correct matching rate than noisy images. Next, the Absolute Trajectory Error (ATE) of noisy and denoised sequences are evaluated on ORB-SLAM2 and the results show that the denoised sequences perform better than the noisy sequences at any noise level. Finally, the completely clean sequence in the dataset and the sequences in the KITTI dataset are denoised and compared with the original sequence through comprehensive experiments. For the clean sequence, the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) of ATE after denoising has decreased by 16.75%; for KITTI sequences, 7 out of 10 sequences have lower RMSE than the original sequences. The results show that the denoised image can achieve higher accuracy in the monocular feature-based visual SLAM under certain conditions.


Robotica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin-Tien Wang ◽  
Guan-Yu Lin

SUMMARYA robot mapping procedure using a modified speeded-up robust feature (SURF) is proposed for building persistent maps with visual landmarks in robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). SURFs are scale-invariant features that automatically recover the scale and orientation of image features in different scenes. However, the SURF method is not originally designed for applications in dynamic environments. The repeatability of the detected SURFs will be reduced owing to the dynamic effect. This study investigated and modified SURF algorithms to improve robustness in representing visual landmarks in robot SLAM systems. Many modifications of the SURF algorithms are proposed in this study including the orientation representation of features, the vector dimension of feature description, and the number of detected features in an image. The concept of sparse representation is also used to describe the environmental map and to reduce the computational complexity when using extended Kalman filter (EKF) for state estimation. Effective procedures of data association and map management for SURFs in SLAM are also designed to improve accuracy in robot state estimation. Experimental works were performed on an actual system with binocular vision sensors to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. The experimental examples include the evaluation of state estimation using EKF SLAM and the implementation of indoor SLAM. In the experiments, the performance of the modified SURF algorithms was compared with the original SURF algorithms. The experimental results confirm that the modified SURF provides better repeatability and better robustness for representing the landmarks in visual SLAM systems.


Author(s):  
Lorenzo Fernández Rojo ◽  
Luis Paya ◽  
Francisco Amoros ◽  
Oscar Reinoso

Nowadays, mobile robots have extended to many different environments, where they have to move autonomously to fulfill an assigned task. With this aim, it is necessary that the robot builds a model of the environment and estimates its position using this model. These two problems are often faced simultaneously. This process is known as SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and is very common since when a robot begins moving in a previously unknown environment it must start generating a model from the scratch while it estimates its position simultaneously. This work is focused on the use of computer vision to solve this problem. The main objective is to develop and test an algorithm to solve the SLAM problem using two sources of information: (a) the global appearance of omnidirectional images captured by a camera mounted on the mobile robot and (b) the robot internal odometry. A hybrid metric-topological approach is proposed to solve the SLAM problem.


Author(s):  
Hui Xiong ◽  
Youping Chen ◽  
Xiaoping Li ◽  
Bing Chen

PurposeBecause submaps including a subset of the global map contain more environmental information, submap-based graph simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) has been studied by many researchers. In most of those studies, helpful environmental information was not taken into consideration when designed the termination criterion of the submap construction process. After optimizing the graph, cumulative error within the submaps was also ignored. To address those problems, this paper aims to propose a two-level optimized graph-based SLAM algorithm.Design/methodology/approachSubmaps are updated by extended Kalman filter SLAM while no geometric-shaped landmark models are needed; raw laser scans are treated as landmarks. A more reasonable criterion called the uncertainty index is proposed to combine with the size of the submap to terminate the submap construction process. After a submap is completed and a loop closure is found, a two-level optimization process is performed to minimize the loop closure error and the accumulated error within the submaps.FindingsSimulation and experimental results indicate that the estimated error of the proposed algorithm is small, and the maps generated are consistent whether in global or local.Practical implicationsThe proposed method is robust to sparse pedestrians and can be adapted to most indoor environments.Originality/valueIn this paper, a two-level optimized graph-based SLAM algorithm is proposed.


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