Review of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Technology in the Agricultural Environment

Simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM)is one of the most attractive research hotspots in the field of robotics,and it is also a prerequisite for the autonomous navigation of robots.It can significantly improve the autonomous navigation ability of mobile robots and their adaptability to different application environments and contribute to the realization of real-time obstacle avoidance and dynamic path planning.Moreover,the application of SLAM technology has expanded from industrial production,intelligent transportation,special operations and other fields to agricultural environments,such as autonomous navigation,independent weeding,three-dimen-sional(3D)mapping,and independent harvesting.This paper mainly introduces the principle,sys-tem framework,latest development and application of SLAM technology,especially in agricultural environments.Firstly,the system framework and theory of the SLAM algorithm are introduced,and the SLAM algorithm is described in detail according to different sensor types.Then,the devel-opment and application of SLAM in the agricultural environment are summarized from two aspects:environment map construction,and localization and navigation of agricultural robots.Finally,the challenges and future research directions of SLAM in the agricultural environment are discussed.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping System Based on Labels

In this paper a label-based simultaneous localization and mapping（ SLAM） system is proposed to provide localization to indoor autonomous robots. In the system quick response（ QR） codes encoded with serial numbers are utilized as labels. These labels are captured by two webcams,then the distances and angles between the labels and webcams are computed. Motion estimated from the two rear wheel encoders is adjusted by observing QR codes. Our system uses the extended Kalman filter（ EKF） for the back-end state estimation. The number of deployed labels controls the state estimation dimension. The label-based EKF-SLAM system eliminates complicated processes,such as data association and loop closure detection in traditional feature-based visual SLAM systems. Our experiments include software-simulation and robot-platform test in a real environment. Results demonstrate that the system has the capability of correcting accumulated errors of dead reckoning and therefore has the advantage of superior precision.

A survey: which features are required for dynamic visual simultaneous localization and mapping?

In recent years,simultaneous localization and mapping in dynamic environments(dynamic SLAM)has attracted significant attention from both academia and industry.Some pioneering work on this technique has expanded the potential of robotic applications.Compared to standard SLAM under the static world assumption,dynamic SLAM divides features into static and dynamic categories and leverages each type of feature properly.Therefore,dynamic SLAM can provide more robust localization for intelligent robots that operate in complex dynamic environments.Additionally,to meet the demands of some high-level tasks,dynamic SLAM can be integrated with multiple object tracking.This article presents a survey on dynamic SLAM from the perspective of feature choices.A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of different visual features is provided in this article.

Robust Iterated Sigma Point FastSLAM Algorithm for Mobile Robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Simultaneous localization and mapping （SLAM） is a key technology for mobile robots operating under unknown environment. While FastSLAM algorithm is a popular solution to the SLAM problem, it suffers from two major drawbacks： one is particle set degeneracy due to lack of observation information in proposal distribution design of the particle filter; the other is errors accumulation caused by linearization of the nonlinear robot motion model and the nonlinear environment observation model. For the purpose of overcoming the above problems, a new iterated sigma point FastSLAM （ISP-FastSLAM） algorithm is proposed. The main contribution of the algorithm lies in the utilization of iterated sigma point Kalman filter （ISPKF）, which minimizes statistical linearization error through Gaussian-Newton iteration, to design an optimal proposal distribution of the particle filter and to estimate the environment landmarks. On the basis of Rao-Blackwellized particle filter, the proposed ISP-FastSLAM algorithm is comprised by two main parts： in the first part, an iterated sigma point particle filter （ISPPF） to localize the robot is proposed, in which the proposal distribution is accurately estimated by the ISPKF; in the second part, a set of ISPKFs is used to estimate the environment landmarks. The simulation test of the proposed ISP-FastSLAM algorithm compared with FastSLAM2.0 algorithm and Unscented FastSLAM algorithm is carried out, and the performances of the three algorithms are compared. The simulation and comparing results show that the proposed ISP-FastSLAM outperforms other two algorithms both in accuracy and in robustness. The proposed algorithm provides reference for the optimization research of FastSLAM algorithm.

Research on simultaneous localization and mapping for AUV by an improved method:Variance reduction FastSLAM with simulated annealing

At present,simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) for an autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV)is a research hotspot.Aiming at the problem of non-linear model and non-Gaussian noise in AUV motion,an improved method of variance reduction fast simultaneous localization and mapping(FastSLAM) with simulated annealing is proposed to solve the problems of particle degradation,particle depletion and particle loss in traditional FastSLAM,which lead to the reduction of AUV location estimation accuracy.The adaptive exponential fading factor is generated by the anneal function of simulated annealing algorithm to improve the effective particle number and replace resampling.By increasing the weight of small particles and decreasing the weight of large particles,the variance of particle weight can be reduced,the number of effective particles can be increased,and the accuracy of AUV location and feature location estimation can be improved to some extent by retaining more information carried by particles.The experimental results based on trial data show that the proposed simulated annealing variance reduction FastSLAM method avoids particle degradation,maintains the diversity of particles,weakened the degeneracy and improves the accuracy and stability of AUV navigation and localization system.

Approach of simultaneous localization and mapping based on local maps for robot

An extended Kalman filter approach of simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) was proposed based on local maps. A local frame of reference was established periodically at the position of the robot, and then the observations of the robot and landmarks were fused into the global frame of reference. Because of the independence of the local map, the approach does not cumulate the estimate and calculation errors which are produced by SLAM using Kalman filter directly. At the same time, it reduces the computational complexity. This method is proven correct and feasible in simulation experiments.

Mobile Robot Hierarchical Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Using Monocular Vision

A hierarchical mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) method that allows us to obtain accurate maps was presented. The local map level is composed of a set of local metric feature maps that are guaranteed to be statistically independent. The global level is a topological graph whose arcs are labeled with the relative location between local maps. An estimation of these relative locations is maintained with local map alignment algorithm, and more accurate estimation is calculated through a global minimization procedure using the loop closure constraint. The local map is built with Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF), where the particle filter is used to extending the path posterior by sampling new poses. The landmark position estimation and update is implemented through extended Kalman filter (EKF). Monocular vision mounted on the robot tracks the 3D natural point landmarks, which are structured with matching scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) feature pairs. The matching for multi-dimension SIFT features is implemented with a KD-tree in the time cost of O(lbN). Experiment results on Pioneer mobile robot in a real indoor environment show the superior performance of our proposed method.

Rapid State Augmentation for Compressed EKF-Based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

A new method for speeding up the state augment operations involved in the compressed extended Kalman filter-based simultaneous localization and mapping （CEKF-SLAM） algorithm was proposed. State augment usually requires a fully-updated state eovariance so as to append the information of newly observed landmarks, thus computational volume increases quadratically with the number of landmarks in the whole map. It was proved that state augment can also be achieved by augmenting just one auxiliary coefficient ma- trix. This method can yield identical estimation results as those using EKF-SLAM algorithm, and computa- tional amount grows only linearly with number of increased landmarks in the local map. The efficiency of this quick state augment for CEKF-SLAM algorithm has been validated by a sophisticated simulation project.

Immune evolutionary algorithms with domain knowledge for simultaneous localization and mapping

Immune evolutionary algorithms with domain knowledge were presented to solve the problem of simultaneous localization and mapping for a mobile robot in unknown environments. Two operators with domain knowledge were designed in algorithms, where the feature of parallel line segments without the problem of data association was used to construct a vaccination operator, and the characters of convex vertices in polygonal obstacle were extended to develop a pulling operator of key point grid. The experimental results of a real mobile robot show that the computational expensiveness of algorithms designed is less than other evolutionary algorithms for simultaneous localization and mapping and the maps obtained are very accurate. Because immune evolutionary algorithms with domain knowledge have some advantages, the convergence rate of designed algorithms is about 44% higher than those of other algorithms.

A novel method for mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping

A novel mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) method is implemented by using the Rao- Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF) for monocular vision-based autonomous robot in unknown indoor environment. The particle filter combined with unscented Kalman filter (UKF) for extending the path posterior by sampling new poses integrating the current observation. Landmark position estimation and update is implemented through UKF. Furthermore, the number of resampling steps is determined adaptively, which greatly reduces the particle depletion problem. Monocular CCD camera mounted on the robot tracks the 3D natural point landmarks structured with matching image feature pairs extracted through Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). The matching for multi-dimension SIFT features which are highly distinctive due to a special descriptor is implemented with a KD-Tree. Experiments on the robot Pioneer3 showed that our method is very precise and stable.

Underwater Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Based on Forward-looking Sonar

A method of underwater simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) based on forward-looking sonar was proposed in this paper. Positions of objects were obtained by the forward-looking sonar, and an improved association method based on an ant colony algorithm was introduced to estimate the positions.In order to improve the precision of the positions, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) was adopted. The presented algorithm was tested in a tank, and the maximum estimation error of SLAM gained was 0.25 m. The tests verify that this method can maintain better association efficiency and reduce navigation error.

Semi-Direct Visual Odometry and Mapping System with RGB-D Camera

In this paper a semi-direct visual odometry and mapping system is proposed with a RGB-D camera,which combines the merits of both feature based and direct based methods.The presented system directly estimates the camera motion of two consecutive RGB-D frames by minimizing the photometric error.To permit outliers and noise,a robust sensor model built upon the t-distribution and an error function mixing depth and photometric errors are used to enhance the accuracy and robustness.Local graph optimization based on key frames is used to reduce the accumulative error and refine the local map.The loop closure detection method,which combines the appearance similarity method and spatial location constraints method,increases the speed of detection.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves higher accuracy on the motion estimation and environment reconstruction compared to the other state-of-the-art methods. Moreover,the proposed approach works in real-time on a laptop without a GPU,which makes it attractive for robots equipped with limited computational resources.

Localization and mapping in urban area based on 3D point cloud of autonomous vehicles

In order to meet the application requirements of autonomous vehicles, this paper proposes a simultaneous localization and mapping （SLAM） algorithm, which uses a VoxelGrid filter to down sample the point cloud data, with the combination of iterative closest points （ICP） algorithm and Gaussian model for particles updating, the matching between the local map and the global map to quantify particles＇ importance weight. The crude estimation by using ICP algorithm can find the high probability area of autonomous vehicles＇ poses, which would decrease particle numbers, increase algorithm speed and restrain particles＇ impoverishment. The calculation of particles＇ importance weight based on matching of attribute between grid maps is simple and practicable. Experiments carried out with the autonomous vehicle platform validate the effectiveness of our approaches.

An RGB-D Camera Based Visual Positioning System for Assistive Navigation by a Robotic Navigation Aid

There are about 253 million people with visual impairment worldwide.Many of them use a white cane and/or a guide dog as the mobility tool for daily travel.Despite decades of efforts,electronic navigation aid that can replace white cane is still research in progress.In this paper,we propose an RGB-D camera based visual positioning system(VPS)for real-time localization of a robotic navigation aid(RNA)in an architectural floor plan for assistive navigation.The core of the system is the combination of a new 6-DOF depth-enhanced visual-inertial odometry(DVIO)method and a particle filter localization(PFL)method.DVIO estimates RNA’s pose by using the data from an RGB-D camera and an inertial measurement unit(IMU).It extracts the floor plane from the camera’s depth data and tightly couples the floor plane,the visual features(with and without depth data),and the IMU’s inertial data in a graph optimization framework to estimate the device’s 6-DOF pose.Due to the use of the floor plane and depth data from the RGB-D camera,DVIO has a better pose estimation accuracy than the conventional VIO method.To reduce the accumulated pose error of DVIO for navigation in a large indoor space,we developed the PFL method to locate RNA in the floor plan.PFL leverages geometric information of the architectural CAD drawing of an indoor space to further reduce the error of the DVIO-estimated pose.Based on VPS,an assistive navigation system is developed for the RNA prototype to assist a visually impaired person in navigating a large indoor space.Experimental results demonstrate that:1)DVIO method achieves better pose estimation accuracy than the state-of-the-art VIO method and performs real-time pose estimation(18 Hz pose update rate)on a UP Board computer;2)PFL reduces the DVIO-accrued pose error by 82.5%on average and allows for accurate wayfinding(endpoint position error≤45 cm)in large indoor spaces.

A Comprehensive UAV Indoor Navigation System Based on Vision Optical Flow and Laser FastSLAM

这份报纸论述为室内的 quadrotor 的全面控制，航行，本地化和印射的答案无人的天线车辆(UAV ) 系统。三个主要传感器在 quadrotor 站台上被使用，也就是，一个惯性的测量单位，一个向下看起来的照相机和扫描激光变化查找者。与这安装， UAV 能要用体力地估计它的自己的速度和位置，当没有碰撞，沿着一个房间的内部墙飞时。在一个以后完成飞行，与收集了数据历史性的 UAV 路径和室内的环境能很好被估计。系统的自治航行部分不要求任何遥远的感觉信息或离线的计算力量，当印射被做时离线。完全的飞行测试被执行了验证忠实和性能航行答案。

Visual attention and clustering-based automatic selection of landmarks using single camera

An improved method with better selection capability using a single camera was presented in comparison with previous method. To improve performance, two methods were applied to landmark selection in an unfamiliar indoor environment. First, a modified visual attention method was proposed to automatically select a candidate region as a more useful landmark. In visual attention, candidate landmark regions were selected with different characteristics of ambient color and intensity in the image. Then, the more useful landmarks were selected by combining the candidate regions using clustering. As generally implemented, automatic landmark selection by vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) results in many useless landmarks, because the features of images are distinguished from the surrounding environment but detected repeatedly. These useless landmarks create a serious problem for the SLAM system because they complicate data association. To address this, a method was proposed in which the robot initially collected landmarks through automatic detection while traversing the entire area where the robot performed SLAM, and then, the robot selected only those landmarks that exhibited high rarity through clustering, which enhanced the system performance. Experimental results show that this method of automatic landmark selection results in selection of a high-rarity landmark. The average error of the performance of SLAM decreases 52% compared with conventional methods and the accuracy of data associations increases.

Standard Dual Quaternion Optimization and Its Applications in Hand-Eye Calibration and SLAM

Several common dual quaternion functions,such as the power function,the magnitude function,the 2-norm function,and the kth largest eigenvalue of a dual quaternion Hermitian matrix,are standard dual quaternion functions,i.e.,the standard parts of their function values depend upon only the standard parts of their dual quaternion variables.Furthermore,the sum,product,minimum,maximum,and composite functions of two standard dual functions,the logarithm and the exponential of standard unit dual quaternion functions,are still standard dual quaternion functions.On the other hand,the dual quaternion optimization problem,where objective and constraint function values are dual numbers but variables are dual quaternions,naturally arises from applications.We show that to solve an equality constrained dual quaternion optimization(EQDQO)problem,we only need to solve two quaternion optimization problems.If the involved dual quaternion functions are all standard,the optimization problem is called a standard dual quaternion optimization problem,and some better results hold.Then,we show that the dual quaternion optimization problems arising from the hand-eye calibration problem and the simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM)problem are equality constrained standard dual quaternion optimization problems.

Progress and Achievements of Multi-sensor Fusion Navigation in China during 2019—2023

Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)can provide all-weather,all-time,high-precision positioning,navigation and timing services,which plays an important role in national security,national economy,public life and other aspects.However,in environments with limited satellite signals such as urban canyons,tunnels,and indoor spaces,it is difficult to provide accurate and reliable positioning services only by satellite navigation.Multi-source sensor integrated navigation can effectively overcome the limitations of single-sensor navigation through the fusion of different types of sensor data such as Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU),vision sensor,and LiDAR,and provide more accurate,stable and robust navigation information in complex environments.We summarizes the research status of multi-source sensor integrated navigation technology,and focuses on the representative innovations and applications of integrated navigation and positioning technology by major domestic scientific research institutions in China during 2019—2023.

基于LIO-SAM建图和激光视觉融合定位的温室自主行走系统

为解决传统导航方案在温室内无法应对光照变化大、作物行间距窄、接收GPS信号差等问题,该研究提出了基于即时定位与地图构建技术的激光视觉融合式自主导航算法。该系统利用三维激光雷达VLP-16(Velodyne LiDAR,VLP-16)和惯性测量单元获取温室环境信息,采用基于紧耦合的雷达惯导定位建图(tightly-coupled lidar inertial odometry via smoothing and mapping,LIO-SAM)算法构建导航地图,基于轮式里程计和视觉里程计采用扩展卡尔曼滤波器算法实现局部定位,融合激光点云配准算法和自适应蒙特卡洛定位算法实现全局定位。同时,在自主行走系统应用A*算法规划全局路径和动态窗口算法规划局部路径,从而实现自主导航。试验结果表明,LIO-SAM算法构建的温室导航地图最大相对误差、最大绝对误差和均方根误差分别为9.9%、0.081和0.063 m,在温室内改进后的定位算法横向偏差小于0.020 m,纵向偏差小于0.090 m;当自主行走系统以0.15、0.30和0.50 m/s的速度运行时,横向偏差、纵向偏差和航向偏角的平均值分别小于0.120 m、0.10 m和8.5°,标准差分别小于0.070 m、0.140 m和6.6°。该导航方案满足自主行走系统在温室内高精度建图、定位和导航的需求,可为自主移动平台提供理论与技术支撑。