Odometry System Research Articles

Ground-LIO: enhanced LiDAR-inertial odometry for ground robots based on ground optimization

Abstract In the field of LiDAR-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, the potential of ground point clouds to enhance pose estimation in mobile robots has yet to be fully realized. This paper focuses on leveraging ground point clouds to improve the performance of LiDAR-Inertial Odometry (LIO) systems for ground-based mobile robots. We begin by analyzing the characteristics of ground point clouds and the typical types of noise that affect their extraction and utilization. Ground point clouds are then extracted from denoised data. Given the generally local planar nature of ground point clouds, we propose a segmentation-and-refitting approach to process them. This method reduces the computational burden of residual calculation in pose estimation by avoiding redundant plane fitting. Additionally, we introduce a data structure designed for the efficient management and utilization of ground point clouds obtained through segmentation and refitting. This structure is particularly suited to the ground point cloud data produced by our method, enabling efficient access and registration through the continuous maintenance and consolidation of local plane parameters. Our method has been integrated into advanced LIO systems (Bai et al 2022 IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 7 4861–8), and experimental results on challenging datasets demonstrate its promising performance.

PID PATH FOLLOWING CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN ON UNMANNED AUTONOMOUS FORKLIFT PROTOTYPE

One of the technologies often used in material handling and material transport is forklift. Conventionally forklifts are operated by human operators. For efficiency, to improve security, safety, and occupational health and to minimize the risk of operators, forklifts can be automated. Therefore, the idea of unmanned autonomous forklift innovation was introduced. In this final project, a motion control system was designed for an unmanned autonomous forklift prototype both in simulation and hardware using PID control techniques, and the odometry system was equipped with a rotary encoder. In the simulation, the controlled variable was the distance and the manipulated variable was the force on the vehicle. Meanwhile, in the prototype, the controlled variable was distance and the manipulated variable was the motor pulse. In the simulation stage the PID control parameters were applied . with an error of 0.32% in the simulation. The PID control parameters were applied to the prototype, that is, . The distance tests were done with variation of 50 cm to 200 cm (25 cm intervals). One variation of the distance experiment was done 5 times. The average absolute error resulted was 2.36 cm.

DGRO: Doppler Velocity and Gyroscope-Aided Radar Odometry

A stable and robust odometry system is essential for autonomous robot navigation. The 4D millimeter-wave radar, known for its resilience in harsh weather conditions, has attracted considerable attention. As the latest generation of FMCW radar, 4D millimeter-wave radar provides point clouds with both position and Doppler velocity information. However, the increased uncertainty and noise in 4D radar point clouds pose challenges that prevent the direct application of LiDAR-based SLAM algorithms. To address this, we propose a SLAM framework that fuses 4D radar data with gyroscope readings using graph optimization techniques. Initially, Doppler velocity is employed to estimate the radar’s ego velocity, with dynamic points being removed accordingly. Building on this, we introduce a pre-integration factor that combines ego-velocity and gyroscope data. Additionally, leveraging the stable RCS characteristics of radar, we design a corresponding point selection method based on normal direction and propose a scan-to-submap point cloud registration technique weighted by RCS intensity. Finally, we validate the reliability and localization accuracy of our framework using both our own dataset and the NTU dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed DGRO system outperforms traditional 4D radar odometry methods, especially in environments with slow speeds and fewer dynamic objects.

RD-VIO: Robust Visual-Inertial Odometry for Mobile Augmented Reality in Dynamic Environments.

It is typically challenging for visual or visual-inertial odometry systems to handle the problems of dynamic scenes and pure rotation. In this work, we design a novel visual-inertial odometry (VIO) system called RD-VIO to handle both of these two problems. First, we propose an IMU-PARSAC algorithm which can robustly detect and match keypoints in a two-stage process. In the first state, landmarks are matched with new keypoints using visual and IMU measurements. We collect statistical information from the matching and then guide the intra-keypoint matching in the second stage. Second, to handle the problem of pure rotation, we detect the motion type and adapt the deferred-triangulation technique during the data-association process. We make the pure-rotational frames into the special subframes. When solving the visual-inertial bundle adjustment, they provide additional constraints to the pure-rotational motion. We evaluate the proposed VIO system on public datasets and online comparison. Experiments show the proposed RD-VIO has obvious advantages over other methods in dynamic environments.

Improved Multi-Sensor Fusion Dynamic Odometry Based on Neural Networks

High-precision simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in dynamic real-world environments plays a crucial role in autonomous robot navigation, self-driving cars, and drone control. To address this dynamic localization issue, in this paper, a dynamic odometry method is proposed based on FAST-LIVO, a fast LiDAR (light detection and ranging)–inertial–visual odometry system, integrating neural networks with laser, camera, and inertial measurement unit modalities. The method first constructs visual–inertial and LiDAR–inertial odometry subsystems. Then, a lightweight neural network is used to remove dynamic elements from the visual part, and dynamic clustering is applied to the LiDAR part to eliminate dynamic environments, ensuring the reliability of the remaining environmental data. Validation of the datasets shows that the proposed multi-sensor fusion dynamic odometry can achieve high-precision pose estimation in complex dynamic environments with high continuity, reliability, and dynamic robustness.

Catadioptric omnidirectional thermal odometry in dynamic environment

This paper presents a catadioptric omnidirectional thermal odometry (COTO) system that estimates the six degrees of freedom (DoF) pose of a camera using only omnidirectional thermal images in visually degraded, fast-motion, and dynamic environments. First, we design and fabricate a central hyperbolic catadioptric omnidirectional thermal camera that captures surrounding thermal images with 360° horizontal field of view (FoV), and improve the omnidirectional camera model and calibration method to obtain high-precision camera intrinsic parameter. Second, we propose the epipolar curve constraint combining with omnidirectional thermal object detection to significantly reduce the interference of moving objects on pose estimation. Third, the implemented COTO pipeline consists of photometric calibration, dynamic region removal, tracking and mapping to overcome the drawbacks of photometric inconsistency and large distortion in omnidirectional thermal images. Experiments have been conducted on a total of 17 sequences of Lab, Outdoor and Driving, amounting to more than 60,000 omnidirectional thermal images of real environments. The experimental results indicate that the proposed COTO system has excellent localization accuracy and unparalleled robustness over the current state-of-the-art methods. The average localization accuracy measured by the absolute trajectory error (ATE) is less than 15 cm from the ground truth in both Lab and Outdoor sequences. In addition, COTO was the only system with complete and successful tracking in all sequences. The system can be used as an innovative localization solution, particularly in challenging environments with changes in ambient light, rapid vehicle motion, and moving object interference, which can be a difficult problem for visual odometry to solve.

VE-LIOM: A Versatile and Efficient LiDAR-Inertial Odometry and Mapping System

LiDAR has emerged as one of the most pivotal sensors in the field of navigation, owing to its expansive measurement range, high resolution, and adeptness in capturing intricate scene details. This significance is particularly pronounced in challenging navigation scenarios where GNSS signals encounter interference, such as within urban canyons and indoor environments. However, the copious volume of point cloud data poses a challenge, rendering traditional iterative closest point (ICP) methods inadequate in meeting real-time odometry requirements. Consequently, many algorithms have turned to feature extraction approaches. Nonetheless, with the advent of diverse scanning mode LiDARs, there arises a necessity to devise unique methods tailored to these sensors to facilitate algorithm migration. To address this challenge, we propose a weighted point-to-plane matching strategy that focuses on local details without relying on feature extraction. This improved approach mitigates the impact of imperfect plane fitting on localization accuracy. Moreover, we present a classification optimization method based on the normal vectors of planes to further refine algorithmic efficiency. Finally, we devise a tightly coupled LiDAR-inertial odometry system founded upon optimization schemes. Notably, we pioneer the derivation of an online gravity estimation method from the perspective of S2 manifold optimization, effectively minimizing the influence of gravity estimation errors introduced during the initialization phase on localization accuracy. The efficacy of the proposed method was validated through experimentation employing various LiDAR sensors. The outcomes of indoor and outdoor experiments substantiate its capability to furnish real-time and precise localization and mapping results.

Enhancing Visual Odometry with Estimated Scene Depth: Leveraging RGB-D Data with Deep Learning

Advances in visual odometry (VO) systems have benefited from the widespread use of affordable RGB-D cameras, improving indoor localization and mapping accuracy. However, older sensors like the Kinect v1 face challenges due to depth inaccuracies and incomplete data. This study compares indoor VO systems that use RGB-D images, exploring methods to enhance depth information. We examine conventional image inpainting techniques and a deep learning approach, utilizing newer depth data from devices like the Kinect v2. Our research highlights the importance of refining data from lower-quality sensors, which is crucial for cost-effective VO applications. By integrating deep learning models with richer context from RGB images and more comprehensive depth references, we demonstrate improved trajectory estimation compared to standard methods. This work advances budget-friendly RGB-D VO systems for indoor mobile robots, emphasizing deep learning’s role in leveraging connections between image appearance and depth data.

An Onboard and Simple to Use Trajectory Programming Odometry System for Work Floor Mobile Robots

An Onboard and Simple to Use Trajectory Programming Odometry System for Work Floor Mobile Robots

Environmental-structure-perception-based adaptive pose fusion method for LiDAR-visual-inertial odometry

Environmental-structure-perception-based adaptive pose fusion method for LiDAR-visual-inertial odometry

OSPC: Online Sequential Photometric Calibration

Photometric calibration is essential to many computer vision applications. One of its key benefits is enhancing the performance of Visual SLAM, especially when it depends on a direct method for tracking, such as the standard KLT algorithm. Additionally, it proves valuable in extracting sensor irradiance values from measured intensities, serving as a pre-processing step for a number of vision algorithms such as shape-from-shading. Current photometric calibration systems rely on a joint optimization problem and encounter an ambiguity in the estimates, which can only be resolved using ground truth information. We propose a novel method that solves for photometric parameters using a sequential estimation approach. To enhance the decoupling of CRF and Vignette estimation, we strategically utilize keyframes with high exposure ratios and small displacements for the former, and keyframes with relatively large displacements for the latter. Our proposed method achieves high accuracy in estimating all parameters; furthermore, the formulations are linear and convex, which makes the solution fast and suitable for online applications. Experiments on a Visual Odometry system validate the proposed method and demonstrate its advantages.

Visual–Inertial Odometry of Structured and Unstructured Lines Based on Vanishing Points in Indoor Environments

In conventional point-line visual–inertial odometry systems in indoor environments, consideration of spatial position recovery and line feature classification can improve localization accuracy. In this paper, a monocular visual–inertial odometry based on structured and unstructured line features of vanishing points is proposed. First, the degeneracy phenomenon caused by a special geometric relationship between epipoles and line features is analyzed in the process of triangulation, and a degeneracy detection strategy is designed to determine the location of the epipoles. Then, considering that the vanishing point and the epipole coincide at infinity, the vanishing point feature is introduced to solve the degeneracy and direction vector optimization problem of line features. Finally, threshold constraints are used to categorize straight lines into structural and non-structural features under the Manhattan world assumption, and the vanishing point measurement model is added to the sliding window for joint optimization. Comparative tests on the EuRoC and TUM-VI public datasets validated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

High-Precision Map Construction in Degraded Long Tunnel Environments of Urban Subways

In response to the demand for high-precision point cloud mapping of subway trains in long tunnel degradation scenarios in major urban cities, we propose a map construction method based on LiDAR and inertial measurement sensors. This method comprises a tightly coupled frontend odometry system based on error Kalman filters and backend optimization using factor graphs. In the frontend odometry, inertial calculation results serve as predictions for the filter, and residuals between LiDAR points and local map plane point clouds are used for filter updates. The global pose graph is constructed based on inter-frame odometry and other constraint factors, followed by a smoothing optimization for map building. Multiple experiments in subway tunnel scenarios demonstrate that the proposed method achieves robust trajectory estimation in long tunnel scenes, where classical multi-sensor fusion methods fail due to sensor degradation. The proposed method achieves a trajectory consistency of 0.1 m in tunnel scenes, meeting the accuracy requirements for train arrival, parking, and interval operations. Additionally, in an industrial park scenario, the method is compared with ground truth provided by inertial navigation, showing an accumulated error of less than 0.2%, indicating high precision.

A self-supervised monocular odometry with visual-inertial and depth representations

Background:Self-supervised monocular visual-odometry (VO) methods have demonstrated impressive results in relative pose estimation, but they encounter challenges when visual information is unreliable. To address this, we introduce a self-supervised visual-inertial odometry (VIO) system. Methods:Our method adopts a trinocular assumption, where three consecutive frames are treated as if captured simultaneously by three cameras. This approach expands the field of view and enhances robustness in visual constraints for 3D structures. Additionally, we incorporate Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) data into the system. This integration, achieved by an attention-based fusion strategy, allows our visual-inertial odometry (VIO) system to adaptively select the most reliable representations for accurate relative pose estimation. Results:Experiments on public and self-collected datasets show that the proposed method is state-of-the-art in visual odometry. Conclusion:The encouraging results show that it is feasible to apply this learning-based VIO system in autonomous cars and robots.

RVIO: An Effective Localization Algorithm for Range-Aided Visual-Inertial Odometry System

RVIO: An Effective Localization Algorithm for Range-Aided Visual-Inertial Odometry System

Semantic geometric fusion multi-object tracking and lidar odometry in dynamic environment

AbstractSimultaneous localization and mapping systems based on rigid scene assumptions cannot achieve reliable positioning and mapping in a complex environment with many moving objects. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel dynamic multi-object lidar odometry (MLO) system based on semantic object recognition technology. The proposed system enables the reliable localization of robots and semantic objects and the generation of long-term static maps in complex dynamic scenes. For ego-motion estimation, the proposed system extracts environmental features that take into account both semantic and geometric consistency constraints. Then, the filtered features can be robust to the semantic movable and unknown dynamic objects. In addition, we propose a new least-squares estimator that uses geometric object points and semantic box planes to realize the multi-object tracking (SGF-MOT) task robustly and precisely. In the mapping module, we implement dynamic semantic object detection using the absolute trajectory tracking list. By using static semantic objects and environmental features, the system eliminates accumulated localization errors and produces a purely static map. Experiments on the public KITTI dataset show that the proposed MLO system provides more accurate and robust object tracking performance and better real-time localization accuracy in complex scenes compared to existing technologies.

A Tightly-Coupled and Keyframe-Based Visual-Inertial-Lidar Odometry System for UGVs With Adaptive Sensor Reliability Evaluation

A Tightly-Coupled and Keyframe-Based Visual-Inertial-Lidar Odometry System for UGVs With Adaptive Sensor Reliability Evaluation

A Roadheader Positioning Method Based on Multi-Sensor Fusion

In coal mines, accurate positioning is vital for roadheader equipment. However, most roadheaders use a standalone strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) which faces challenges like error accumulation, drift, initial alignment needs, temperature sensitivity, and the demand for high-quality sensors. In this paper, a roadheader Visual–Inertial Odometry (VIO) system is proposed, combining SINS and stereo visual odometry to adjust to coal mine environments. Given the inherently dimly lit conditions of coal mines, our system includes an image-enhancement module to preprocess images, aiding in feature matching for stereo visual odometry. Additionally, a Kalman filter merges the positional data from SINS and stereo visual odometry. When tested against three other methods on the KITTI and EuRoC datasets, our approach showed notable precision on the EBZ160M-2 Roadheader, with attitude errors less than 0.2751° and position discrepancies within 0.0328 m, proving its advantages over SINS.

Point feature correction based rolling shutter modeling for EKF-based visual-inertial odometry

The application of consumer-grade rolling-shutter (RS) cameras in visual inertial odometry (VIO) systems deserves attention. In previous works, VIO systems with RS cameras usually adopt different dimensions of RS modeling to represent the camera motion. Although the complex camera motion expression improves accuracy, adding more variables greatly increases the computation load. Therefore, considering the limitations of camera motion modeling, this paper introduces a point feature correction strategy to improve the performance of the system in terms of both speed and accuracy. The optimized camera poses and high-frequency inertial measurement unit (IMU) are employed to correct the point features in the RS image to new pixel coordinates in the global shutter view (in the middle of the RS image readout time) by epipolar transfer. At the same time, we handle the zero velocity and abnormal cases of RS modeling to improve the robustness of the system. Furthermore, the readout time of the RS camera is self-calibrated online during the state augmentation stage and can quickly converge and stabilize to near the true value. The readout time of the RS camera is locally observable, except for two degenerate motions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on a public dataset in terms of accuracy and computational cost. We port our algorithm to an Android-based mobile phone and our system outputs real-time trajectories on the mobile phone. Then, we use the motion capture system to obtain the ground truth phone pose to test the performance of our algorithm.

SDV-LOAM: Semi-Direct Visual-LiDAR Odometry and Mapping.

Visual-LiDAR odometry and mapping (V-LOAM), which fuses complementary information of a camera and a LiDAR, is an attractive solution for accurate and robust pose estimation and mapping. However, existing systems could suffer nontrivial tracking errors arising from 1) association between 3D LiDAR points and sparse 2D features (i.e., 3D-2D depth association) and 2) obvious drifts in the vertical direction in the 6-degree of freedom (DOF) sweep-to-map optimization. In this paper, we present SDV-LOAM which incorporates a semi-direct visual odometry and an adaptive sweep-to-map LiDAR odometry to effectively avoid the above-mentioned errors and in turn achieve high tracking accuracy. The visual module of our SDV-LOAM directly extracts high-gradient pixels where 3D LiDAR points project on for tracking. To avoid the problem of large scale difference between matching frames in the VO, we design a novel point matching with propagation method to propagate points of a host frame to an intermediate keyframe which is closer to the current frame to reduce scale differences. To reduce the pose estimation drifts in the vertical direction, our LiDAR module employs an adaptive sweep-to-map optimization method which automatically choose to optimize 3 horizontal DOF or 6 full DOF pose according to the richness of geometric constraints in the vertical direction. In addition, we propose a novel sweep reconstruction method which can increase the input frequency of LiDAR point clouds to the same frequency as the camera images, and in turn yield a high frequency output of the LiDAR odometry in theory. Experimental results demonstrate that our SDV-LOAM ranks 8th on the KITTI odometry benchmark which outperforms most LiDAR/visual-LiDAR odometry systems. In addition, our visual module outperforms state-of-the-art visual odometry and our adaptive sweep-to-map optimization can improve the performance of several existing open-sourced LiDAR odometry systems. Moreover, we demonstrate our SDV-LOAM on a custom-built hardware platform in large-scale environments which achieves both a high accuracy and output frequency. We have released the source code of our SDV-LOAM for the development of the community.