Mapping In Dynamic Environments Research Articles

SLAM[formula omitted]: Simultaneous Localization and Multimode Mapping for indoor dynamic environments

Traditional visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) methods based on point features are often limited by strong static assumptions and texture information, resulting in inaccurate camera pose estimation and object localization.To address these challenges, we present SLAM2, a novel semantic RGB-D SLAM system that can obtain accurate estimation of the camera pose and the 6DOF pose of other objects, resulting in complete and clean static 3D model mapping in dynamic environments. Our system makes full use of the point, line, and plane features in space to enhance the camera pose estimation accuracy. It combines the traditional geometric method with a deep learning method to detect both known and unknown dynamic objects in the scene. Moreover, our system is designed with a three-mode mapping method, including dense, semi-dense, and sparse, where the mode can be selected according to the needs of different tasks. This makes our visual SLAM system applicable to diverse application areas. Evaluation in the TUM RGB-D and Bonn RGB-D datasets demonstrates that our SLAM system achieves the most advanced localization accuracy and the cleanest static 3D mapping of the scene in dynamic environments, compared to state-of-the-art methods. Specifically, our system achieves a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.018 m in the highly dynamic TUM w/half sequence, outperforming ORB-SLAM3 (0.231 m) and DRG-SLAM (0.025 m). In the Bonn dataset, our system demonstrates superior performance in 14 out of 18 sequences, with an average RMSE reduction of 27.3% compared to the next best method.

DN-SLAM: A Visual SLAM With ORB Features and NeRF Mapping in Dynamic Environments

DN-SLAM: A Visual SLAM With ORB Features and NeRF Mapping in Dynamic Environments

Continuous Occupancy Mapping in Dynamic Environments Using Particles

Continuous Occupancy Mapping in Dynamic Environments Using Particles

A 1.2 Billion Pixel Human-Labeled Dataset for Data-Driven Classification of Coastal Environments

The world’s coastlines are spatially highly variable, coupled-human-natural systems that comprise a nested hierarchy of component landforms, ecosystems, and human interventions, each interacting over a range of space and time scales. Understanding and predicting coastline dynamics necessitates frequent observation from imaging sensors on remote sensing platforms. Machine Learning models that carry out supervised (i.e., human-guided) pixel-based classification, or image segmentation, have transformative applications in spatio-temporal mapping of dynamic environments, including transient coastal landforms, sediments, habitats, waterbodies, and water flows. However, these models require large and well-documented training and testing datasets consisting of labeled imagery. We describe “Coast Train,” a multi-labeler dataset of orthomosaic and satellite images of coastal environments and corresponding labels. These data include imagery that are diverse in space and time, and contain 1.2 billion labeled pixels, representing over 3.6 million hectares. We use a human-in-the-loop tool especially designed for rapid and reproducible Earth surface image segmentation. Our approach permits image labeling by multiple labelers, in turn enabling quantification of pixel-level agreement over individual and collections of images.

Development of RGB-D simultaneous localization and mapping in dynamic environments based on motion removal and dense map reconstruction

The state-of-art simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) methods have been demonstrated of satisfactory results in static environments. However, most of the existing methods cannot be directly applied in dynamic environments to account for moving objects. To solve the practical problem of SLAM in dynamic environments, an RGB-D SLAM method is developed based on moving objects removal and dense map reconstruction. Specifically, deep learning-based instance segmentation is performed to obtain the semantic information which is furthermore combined with multiview geometry theory to detect possible moving objects. Kalman filter and feature fusion algorithms are further used for moving objects tracking to improve the detection accuracy. Then the camera pose is estimated using the static feature points after motion removal to realize reliable localization in dynamic environments. Out of concern for the infeasibility of navigation and perception with sparse feature maps, each-single-view of dense map is constructed using the RGB image and the depth map collected by the RGB-D camera after motion removal. The dense environmental map is finally reconstructed through the registration of point cloud of selected key image frames. Experiments are conducted on public datasets and real scene data to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Compared with the state-of-art method ORB-SLAM2, the absolute trajectory error and the relative pose error obtained by the proposed method are significantly reduced by at least 91%, and the localization accuracy reaches 0.001 m.

MotionSC: Data Set and Network for Real-Time Semantic Mapping in Dynamic Environments

This work addresses a gap in semantic scene completion (SSC) data by creating a novel outdoor data set with accurate and complete dynamic scenes. Our data set is formed from randomly sampled views of the world at each time step, which supervises generalizability to complete scenes without occlusions or traces. We create SSC baselines from state-of-the-art open source networks and construct a benchmark real-time dense local semantic mapping algorithm, MotionSC, by leveraging recent 3D deep learning architectures to enhance SSC with temporal information. Our network shows that the proposed data set can quantify and supervise accurate scene completion in the presence of dynamic objects, which can lead to the development of improved dynamic mapping algorithms.

Real-Time Artificial Intelligence Based Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in Dynamic Environments – a Review

Real-Time Artificial Intelligence Based Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in Dynamic Environments – a Review

OC-SLAM: Steadily Tracking and Mapping in Dynamic Environments

Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system is mainly used in real-time localization and mapping tasks of robots in various complex environments, while traditional monocular vision algorithms are struggling to cope with weak texture and dynamic scenes. To solve these problems, this work presents an object detection and clustering assisted SLAM algorithm (OC-SLAM), which adopts a faster object detection algorithm to add semantic information to the image and conducts geometrical constraint on the dynamic keypoints in the prediction box to optimize the camera pose. It also uses RGB-D camera to perform dense point cloud reconstruction with the dynamic objects rejected, and facilitates European clustering of dense point clouds to jointly eliminate dynamic features combining with object detection algorithm. Experiments in the TUM dataset indicate that OC-SLAM enhances the localization accuracy of the SLAM system in the dynamic environments compared with original algorithm and it has shown impressive performance in the localizition and can build a more precise dense point cloud map in dynamic scenes.

Effects of Moving Landmark’s Speed on Multi-Robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in Dynamic Environments

Effects of Moving Landmark’s Speed on Multi-Robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in Dynamic Environments

RDS-SLAM: Real-Time Dynamic SLAM Using Semantic Segmentation Methods

The scene rigidity is a strong assumption in typical visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (vSLAM) algorithms. Such strong assumption limits the usage of most vSLAM in dynamic real-world environments, which are the target of several relevant applications such as augmented reality, semantic mapping, unmanned autonomous vehicles, and service robotics. Many solutions are proposed that use different kinds of semantic segmentation methods (e.g., Mask R-CNN, SegNet) to detect dynamic objects and remove outliers. However, as far as we know, such kind of methods wait for the semantic results in the tracking thread in their architecture, and the processing time depends on the segmentation methods used. In this paper, we present RDS-SLAM, a real-time visual dynamic SLAM algorithm that is built on ORB-SLAM3 and adds a semantic thread and a semantic-based optimization thread for robust tracking and mapping in dynamic environments in real-time. These novel threads run in parallel with the others, and therefore the tracking thread does not need to wait for the semantic information anymore. Besides, we propose an algorithm to obtain as the latest semantic information as possible, thereby making it possible to use segmentation methods with different speeds in a uniform way. We update and propagate semantic information using the moving probability, which is saved in the map and used to remove outliers from tracking using a data association algorithm. Finally, we evaluate the tracking accuracy and real-time performance using the public TUM RGB-D datasets and Kinect camera in dynamic indoor scenarios. Source code and demo: https://github.com/yubaoliu/RDS-SLAM.git.

Editorial for Special Issue “Digital Mapping in Dynamic Environments”

It is widely acknowledged that the global stock of soil and environmental resources are diminishing and under threat. This issue stems from current and historical unsustainable management practices, leading to degraded landscapes, which is further compounded by increased pressures upon them from ever-increasing anthropogenic activities. To curb the trajectory toward a collapse of our ecosystems, systematic ways are needed to assess the condition of our natural resources, how much they might have changed, and to what extent this might impact on the life sustaining functions we derive from our environment and the extent of our food producing systems. Some solutions to these issues come in the form of measurement, mapping and monitoring technology, which facilitates powerful ways in which to be informed about and to understand and assess the condition of our landscapes so that they can be managed strategically or simply improved. This Special Issue showcases from several locations across the globe, detailed examples of what is achievable at the convergence of big data brought about by remote and proximal sensing platforms, advanced statistical modelling and computing infrastructure to understand and monitor our ecosystems better. These utilities not only provide high-resolution abilities to map the extent and changes to our food producing systems, they also have yielded new ways to determine land-use and climate effects on the fate of soil carbon across living generations and to identify hydrological risk strategies in otherwise data-poor urban environments. Leveraging the availability of remote sensing data is telling, but the papers in this Special Issue also highlight the sophistication of modelling capabilities to deliver not only highly detailed maps of temporal dynamic soil phenomena but ways to draw new inferences from sparse and disparate model input data. The challenges of restoring our ecosystems are immense and sobering. However, we are well equipped and capable of confronting these pervasive issues in objective and data-informed ways that have previously never been possible.

Improving Dense Mapping for Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments Based on Semantic Information

In recent decades, semantic mapping has become a hot topic benefited from the maturity of visual simultaneous localization and mapping (visual SLAM) and the success of deep learning. Despite the impressive performance of the current state-of-the-art systems, semantic mapping in dynamic environments is still a challenging task. To address this problem, we propose a framework that fuses geometric information, semantic information, and human activity into a 3D dense map. The accuracy of the map is guaranteed by the reliable camera trajectory estimation and the static pixels used for 3D reconstruction. With the proposed framework, we achieve two objectives. On the one hand, we accurately reconstruct the environment from both geometric and semantic perspectives. On the other hand, we record human activity by tracking the human trajectory during the mapping period. We conduct both qualitative and quantitative experiments on the public TUM dataset. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Coarse Semantic-Based Motion Removal for Robust Mapping in Dynamic Environments

SLAM in dynamic environments is still a severe challenge for most feature-based SLAM systems. Moving objects will lead to terrible errors in the calculation of frame tracking and local mapping. We propose a novel method for keypoints selection to lower the negative effect brought by moving objects during map construction. To address this challenge, we concentrate on the combination of coarse semantic information and a feature-based SLAM system. In this article, a modified CenterNet object detector is proposed as the moving object detection thread for providing coarse semantic information and 2D location. The modified CenterNet can provide a faster and more accurate prediction. For each frame in a sequence, objects in a scenario will be classified into two motion states, non-static and static, according to the category prediction from the moving object detection thread. Then important processing called semantic data association is presented for motion removal in frame tracking thread and local mapping thread. In this way, the keypoints on the non-static objects will not be chosen for calculation. Finally, on this basis, a modified real-time SLAM system is presented. Experimental results in TUM indoor dataset show that the proposed SLAM system outperforms the state-of-the-art ORB-SLAM2 in dynamic environments. Besides that, our method has a better speed-accuracy trade-off than other deep learning-based SLAM systems in dynamic environments.

Survey of cube mapping methods in interactive computer graphics

The standard cube mapping technique implemented in graphics pipelines, while useful in many scenarios, has significant shortcomings for important application areas in interactive computer graphics, e.g., dynamic environment mapping, omnidirectional shadow maps, or planetary-scale terrain rendering. Many alternative mapping methods have been proposed over the years with the purpose of reducing area and/or angular distortions. In this paper, we give an overview of methods suitable for interactive applications and analyze their properties. Furthermore, we evaluate a set of additional transformation functions and identify a simple new method with favorable distortion properties.

Integration of an Inverse Optimal Neural Controller with Reinforced-SLAM for Path Panning and Mapping in Dynamic Environments

This work presents an artificial intelligence approach to solve the problem of finding a path and creating a map in unknown environments using Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for a differential mobile robot along with an optimal control system. We propose the integration of these approaches (two of the most widely used ones) for the implementation of robot navigation systems with an efficient method of control composed by a neural identifier and an inverse optimal control in order to obtain a robust and autonomous system of navigation in unknown and dynamic environments.

Celebrating diversity: a mixture of experts approach for runtime mapping in dynamic environments

Matching program parallelism to platform parallelism using thread selection is difficult when the environment and available resources dynamically change. Existing compiler or runtime approaches are typically based on a one-size fits all policy. There is little ability to either evaluate or adapt the policy when encountering new external workloads or hardware resources. This paper focuses on selecting the best number of threads for a parallel application in dynamic environments. It develops a new scheme based on a mixture of experts approach. It learns online which, of a number of existing policies, or experts, is best suited for a particular environment without having to try out each policy. It does this by using a novel environment predictor as a proxy for the quality of an expert thread selection policy. Additional expert policies can easily be added and are selected only when appropriate. We evaluate our scheme in environments with varying external workloads and hardware resources.We then consider the case when workloads use affinity scheduling or are themselves adaptive and show that our approach, in all cases, outperforms existing schemes and surprisingly improves workload performance. On average, we improve 1.66x over OpenMP default, 1.34x over an online scheme, 1.25x over an offline policy and 1.2x over a state-of-art analytic model. Determining the right number and type of experts is an open problem and our initial analysis shows that adding more experts improves accuracy and performance.

Robust Mapping for Mobile Robot Based on Immobile Area Grid Map Considering Potential Moving Objects

SUMMARYMobile robots need Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for autonomous movement in human living environments. The occupancy grid map used in SLAM is a conventional method which makes a map by an occupancy probability in each grid. This method renews a map based on whether an object is observed or not. In order to remove moving objects from a map, an additional method is required. However, conventional methods deal only with actually moving objects, and potential moving objects (e.g., standing humans) are mapped as static objects. Furthermore, only binary states, used or not used, are given to each object in map updating. This paper proposes the immobility area grid map to represent a map by an immobility probability in each grid. The proposed method renews a map based on the identification of observed objects by a robot's sensors, in addition to whether an object is observed or not. We introduce the map update parameter, which is set adaptively from the certainty of identification result of the object. Observed objects can take continuous states, truly static—unknown—truly moving, according to the parameter value. Potential moving objects are not mapped if the parameter takes values corresponding to moving objects. The experimental results show robust mapping in dynamic environments including potential moving objects.

Generic NDT mapping in dynamic environments and its application for lifelong SLAM

In this paper, we present a new, generic approach for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). First of all, we propose an abstraction of the underlying sensor data using Normal Distribution Transform (NDT) maps that are suitable for making our approach independent from the used sensor and the dimension of the generated maps. We present several modifications for the original NDT mapping to handle free-space measurements explicitly. We additionally describe a method to detect and handle dynamic objects such as moving persons. This enables the usage of the proposed approach in highly dynamic environments. In the second part of this paper we describe our graph-based SLAM approach that is designed for lifelong usage. Therefore, the memory and computational complexity is limited by pruning the pose graph in an appropriate way.

Robust Mapping for Mobile Robot Based on Immobile Area Grid Map Considering Potential Moving Objects

SUMMARY Mobile robots need Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for autonomous movement in human living environments. The occupancy grid map used in SLAM is a conventional method which makes a map by an occupancy probability in each grid. This method renews a map based on whether an object is observed or not. In order to remove moving objects from a map, an additional method is required. However, conventional methods deal only with actually moving objects, and potential moving objects (e.g., standing humans) are mapped as static objects. Furthermore, only binary states, used or not used, are given to each object in map updating. This paper proposes the immobility area grid map to represent a map by an immobility probability in each grid. The proposed method renews a map based on the identification of observed objects by a robot's sensors, in addition to whether an object is observed or not. We introduce the map update parameter, which is set adaptively from the certainty of identification result of the object. Observed objects can take continuous states, truly static—unknown—truly moving, according to the parameter value. Potential moving objects are not mapped if the parameter takes values corresponding to moving objects. The experimental results show robust mapping in dynamic environments including potential moving objects.

3D normal distributions transform occupancy maps: An efficient representation for mapping in dynamic environments

In order to enable long-term operation of autonomous vehicles in industrial environments numerous challenges need to be addressed. A basic requirement for many applications is the creation and maintenance of consistent 3D world models. This article proposes a novel 3D spatial representation for online real-world mapping, building upon two known representations: normal distributions transform (NDT) maps and occupancy grid maps. The proposed normal distributions transform occupancy map (NDT-OM) combines the advantages of both representations; compactness of NDT maps and robustness of occupancy maps. One key contribution in this article is that we formulate an exact recursive updates for NDT-OMs. We show that the recursive update equations provide natural support for multi-resolution maps. Next, we describe a modification of the recursive update equations that allows adaptation in dynamic environments. As a second key contribution we introduce NDT-OMs and formulate the occupancy update equations that allow to build consistent maps in dynamic environments. The update of the occupancy values are based on an efficient probabilistic sensor model that is specially formulated for NDT-OMs. In several experiments with a total of 17 hours of data from a milk factory we demonstrate that NDT-OMs enable real-time performance in large-scale, long-term industrial setups.