Complementing images with inertial measurements has become one of the most popular approaches to achieve highly accurate and robust real-time camera pose tracking. In this paper, we present a keyframe-based approach to visual-inertial simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for monocular and stereo cameras. Our visual-inertial SLAM system is based on a real-time capable visual-inertial odometry method that provides locally consistent trajectory and map estimates. We achieve global consistency in the estimate through online loop-closing and non-linear optimization. Furthermore, our system supports relocalization in a map that has been previously obtained and allows for continued SLAM operation. We evaluate our approach in terms of accuracy, relocalization capability and run-time efficiency on public indoor benchmark datasets and on newly recorded outdoor sequences. We demonstrate state-of-the-art performance of our system compared to a visual-inertial odometry method and baseline visual SLAM approaches in recovering the trajectory of the camera.
Visual localization, e.g. on mobile phones, has typically been approached by mapping the environment in an offline process and localizing within the prebuilt map afterwards (e.g., @cite_21 @cite_1 @cite_19 @cite_6 ). A recent visual-inertial localization approach that runs efficiently on mobile devices has recently been proposed by @cite_6 . This approach uses sophisticated map compression and image matching techniques to localize the camera in a prebuilt interest-point based map. However, in contrast to our visual-inertial SLAM approach, these methods do not allow for continued global mapping of the environment using SLAM.
@cite_19 @cite_21 @cite_1 @cite_6
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We propose the combination of a keyframe-based monocular SLAM system and a global localization method. The SLAM system runs locally on a camera-equipped mobile client and provides continuous, relative 6DoF pose estimation as well as keyframe images with computed camera locations. As the local map expands, a server process localizes the keyframes with a pre-made, globally-registered map and returns the global registration correction to the mobile client. The localization result is updated each time a keyframe is added, and observations of global anchor points are added to the client-side bundle adjustment process to further refine the SLAM map registration and limit drift. The end result is a 6DoF tracking and mapping system which provides globally registered tracking in real-time on a mobile device, overcomes the difficulties of localization with a narrow field-of-view mobile phone camera, and is not limited to tracking only in areas covered by the offline reconstruction. As simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques have flourished with the advent of 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors, accurate 3D maps are readily available. Many researchers turn their attention to localization in a previously acquired 3D map. In this paper, we propose a novel and lightweight camera-only visual positioning algorithm that involves localization within prior 3D LiDAR maps. We aim to achieve the consumer level global positioning system (GPS) accuracy using vision within the urban environment, where GPS signal is unreliable. Via exploiting a stereo camera, depth from the stereo disparity map is matched with 3D LiDAR maps. A full six degree of freedom (DOF) camera pose is estimated via minimizing depth residual. Powered by visual tracking that provides a good initial guess for the localization, the proposed depth residual is successfully applied for camera pose estimation. Our method runs online, as the average localization error is comparable to ones resulting from state-of-the-art approaches. We validate the proposed method as a stand-alone localizer using KITTI dataset and as a module in the SLAM framework using our own dataset. This paper presents a new real-time hierarchical (topological metric) simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system. It can be applied to the robust localization of a vehicle in large-scale outdoor urban environments, improving the current vehicle navigation systems, most of which are only based on Global Positioning System (GPS). Then, it can be used on autonomous vehicle guidance with recurrent trajectories (bus journeys, theme park internal journeys, etc.). It is exclusively based on the information provided by both a low-cost, wide-angle stereo camera and a low-cost GPS. Our approach divides the whole map into local submaps identified by the so-called fingerprints (vehicle poses). In this submap level (low-level SLAM), a metric approach is carried out. There, a 3-D sequential mapping of visual natural landmarks and the vehicle location orientation are obtained using a top-down Bayesian method to model the dynamic behavior. GPS measurements are integrated within this low-level improving vehicle positioning. A higher topological level (high-level SLAM) based on fingerprints and the multilevel relaxation (MLR) algorithm has been added to reduce the global error within the map, keeping real-time constraints. This level provides nearly consistent estimation, keeping a small degradation with GPS unavailability. Some experimental results for large-scale outdoor urban environments are presented, showing an almost constant processing time. We propose a visual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) system able to perform robustly in populated environments. The image stream from a moving RGB-D camera is the only input to the system. The computed map in real-time is composed of two layers: 1) The unpopulated geometrical layer, which describes the geometry of the bare scene as an occupancy grid where pieces of information corresponding to people have been removed; 2) A semantic human activity layer, which describes the trajectory of each person with respect to the unpopulated map, labelling an area as "traversable" or "occupied". Our proposal is to embed a real-time human tracker into the system. The purpose is twofold. First, to mask out of the rigid SLAM pipeline the image regions occupied by people, which boosts the robustness, the relocation, the accuracy and the reusability of the geometrical map in populated scenes. Secondly, to estimate the full trajectory of each detected person with respect to the scene map, irrespective of the location of the moving camera when the person was imaged. The proposal is tested with two popular visual SLAM systems, C2TAM and ORBSLAM2, proving its generality. The experiments process a benchmark of RGB-D sequences from camera onboard a mobile robot. They prove the robustness, accuracy and reuse capabilities of the two layer map for populated scenes.