SLAM with Object Discovery, Modeling and Mapping

Siddharth Choudhary, Alexander J. B. Trevor, Henrik I. Christensen, Frank Dellaert

Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Abstract

Object discovery and modeling have been widely studied in the computer vision and robotics communities. SLAM approaches that make use of objects and higher level features have also recently been proposed. Using higher level features provides several benefits: these can be more discrim- inative, which helps data association, and can serve to inform service robotic tasks that require higher level information, such as object models and poses. We propose an approach for online object discovery and object modeling, and extend a SLAM system to utilize these discovered and modeled objects as landmarks to help localize the robot in an online manner. Such landmarks are particularly useful for detecting loop closures in larger maps. In addition to the map, our system outputs a database of detected object models for use in future SLAM or service robotic tasks. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the approach’s ability to detect and model objects, as well as to improve SLAM results by detecting loop closures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by ARL MAST CTA, project 36666A9, and Boeing Corporation.

Contact

Send any comments or questions to Siddharth Choudhary (Email : siddharth [dot] choudhary [at] gatech.edu)