Multi-UAV collaborative monocular SLAM

Abstract

With systems performing Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) from a single robot reaching considerable maturity, the possibility of employing a team of robots to collaboratively perform a task has been attracting increasing interest. Promising great impact in a plethora of tasks ranging from industrial inspection to digitization of archaeological structures, collaborative scene perception and mapping are key in efficient and effective estimation. In this paper, we propose a novel, centralized architecture for collaborative monocular SLAM employing multiple small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to act as agents. Each agent is able to independently explore the environment running limited-memory SLAM onboard, while sending all collected information to a central server, a ground station with increased computational resources. The server manages the maps of all agents, triggering loop closure, map fusion, optimization and distribution of information back to the agents. This allows an agent to incorporate observations from others in its SLAM estimates on the fly. We put the proposed framework to the test employing a nominal keyframe-based monocular SLAM algorithm, demonstrating the applicability of this system in multi-UAV scenarios.