Place recognition in 3D data is a challenging task that has been commonly approached by adapting image-based solutions. Methods based on local features suffer from ambiguity and from robustness to environment changes while methods based on global features are viewpoint dependent. We propose SegMatch, a reliable place recognition algorithm based on the matching of 3D segments. Segments provide a good compromise between local and global descriptions, incorporating their strengths while reducing their individual drawbacks. SegMatch does not rely on assumptions of ‘perfect segmentation’, or on the existence of ‘objects’ in the environment, which allows for reliable execution on large scale, unstructured environments. We quantitatively demonstrate that SegMatch can achieve accurate localization at a frequency of 1Hz on the largest sequence of the KITTI odometry dataset. We furthermore show how this algorithm can reliably detect and close loops in real-time, during online operation. In addition, the source code for the SegMatch algorithm is made publicly available1.
We therefore aim for an approach which does not rely on assumptions about the environment being composed of simplistic geometric primitives such as planes, or a rich library of objects. This allows for a more general, scalable solution. Inspiration is taken from and which proposed different SLAM techniques based on segments. A strategy for aligning Velodyne scans based on segments is proposed in @cite_17 where the is used to compare and match segments as defined in @cite_9 . Analogously, @cite_8 proposed an Extended Kalman Filter solution which uses segments as landmarks, rather than point features.
@cite_8 @cite_9 @cite_17
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This paper presents a method for pairwise 3D alignment which solves data association by matching scan segments across scans. Generating accurate segment associations allows to run a modified version of the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm where the search for point-to-point correspondences is constrained to associated segments. The novelty of the proposed approach is in the segment matching process which takes into account the proximity of segments, their shape, and the consistency of their relative locations in each scan. Scan segmentation is here assumed to be given (recent studies provide various alternatives [10], [19]). The method is tested on seven sequences of Velodyne scans acquired in urban environments. Unlike various other standard versions of ICP, which fail to recover correct alignment when the displacement between scans increases, the proposed method is shown to be robust to displacements of several meters. In addition, it is shown to lead to savings in computational times which are potentially critical in real-time applications. We propose a direct (feature-less) monocular SLAM algorithm which, in contrast to current state-of-the-art regarding direct methods, allows to build large-scale, consistent maps of the environment. Along with highly accurate pose estimation based on direct image alignment, the 3D environment is reconstructed in real-time as pose-graph of keyframes with associated semi-dense depth maps. These are obtained by filtering over a large number of pixelwise small-baseline stereo comparisons. The explicitly scale-drift aware formulation allows the approach to operate on challenging sequences including large variations in scene scale. Major enablers are two key novelties: (1) a novel direct tracking method which operates on ( sim (3) ), thereby explicitly detecting scale-drift, and (2) an elegant probabilistic solution to include the effect of noisy depth values into tracking. The resulting direct monocular SLAM system runs in real-time on a CPU. The Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) problem has been well studied in the robotics community, especially using mono, stereo cameras or depth sensors. 3D depth sensors, such as Velodyne LiDAR, have proved in the last 10 years to be very useful to perceive the environment in autonomous driving, but few methods exist that directly use these 3D data for odometry. We present a new low-drift SLAM algorithm based only on 3D LiDAR data. Our method relies on a scan-to-model matching framework. We first have a specific sampling strategy based on the LiDAR scans. We then define our model as the previous localized LiDAR sweeps and use the Implicit Moving Least Squares (IMLS) surface representation. We show experiments with the Velodyne HDL32 with only 0.40 drift over a 4 km acquisition without any loop closure (i.e., 16 m drift after 4 km). We tested our solution on the KITTI benchmark with a Velodyne HDL64 and ranked among the best methods (against mono, stereo and LiDAR methods) with a global drift of only 0.69 . This paper proposes a pose-based algorithm to solve the full Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) problem for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), navigating in an unknown and possibly unstructured environment. A probabilistic scan matching technique using range scans gathered from a Mechanical Scanning Imaging Sonar (MSIS) is used together with the robot dead-reckoning displacements. The proposed method utilizes two Extended Kalman Filters (EKFs). The first, estimates the local path traveled by the robot while forming the scan as well as its uncertainty, providing position estimates for correcting the distortions that the vehicle motion produces in the acoustic images. The second is an augmented state EKF that estimates and keeps the registered scans poses. The raw data from the sensors are processed and fused in-line. No priory structural information or initial pose are considered. Also, a method of estimating the uncertainty of the scan matching estimation is provided. The algorithm has been tested on an AUV guided along a 600 m path within a marina environment, showing the viability of the proposed approach.