A novel incremental topological mapping using global visual features

Abstract

Mapping is fundamental in the navigation task of autonomous mobile robots. In appearance-based mapping, the process of detecting visual loop closing determines whether the current observation comes from a previously visited location or a new one. The purpose of this paper is to present a new method of exploring indoor environments by an autonomous mobile robot, as well as building topological maps based on global visual attributes. This method takes advantage of the small size of the GIST descriptors, and the ease of their calculation. We also make use of omnidirectional images to build a single global visual descriptor showing an entire room. Furthermore, in order to handle the problem of a visual loop closing, we have employed a formula that correctly assigns each global descriptor to its location.