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MRPT papers

What's this?
This is a repository of scientific papers whose experimental results were carried out using the MRPT library and tools. Along with each paper, you'll also find the corresponding datasets, the source code used for the experiments and/or instructions/scripts to reproduce the results.

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See also: A direct search in Google Scholar for publications mentioning MRPT.

6 DoF SLAM using a ToF Camera: The challenge of a continuously growing number of landmarks

"6 DoF SLAM using a ToF Camera: The challenge of a continuously growing number of landmarks", Siegfried Hochdorfer, Christian Schlegel, IROS 2010 - (Link).

Authors are with the Collaborative Center for Applied Research (http://www.zafh-servicerobotik.de/), Ulm, Germany.

Online video with results from this paper:

Optimal Filtering for Non-Parametric Observation Models: Applications to Localization and SLAM

icra2008_opt_sampling.jpg

"Optimal Filtering for Non-Parametric Observation Models: Applications to Localization and SLAM", J.L. Blanco, J. Gonzalez, J.A. Fernandez-Madrigal, The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), (In press), DOI: 10.1177/0278364910364165 2010.



Derivation and Implementation of a Full 6D EKF-based Solution to Range-Bearing SLAM

Technical report: "Derivation and Implementation of a Full 6D EKF-based Solution to Range-Bearing SLAM", Jose-Luis Blanco, Perception and Mobile Robots Research Group, University of Malaga, Spain. (new version AUG-2010: PDF - soon!, old version: PDF)


This document describes the theory behind the application kf-slam.

Bibtex info:

TechRep: A tutorial on SE(3) transformation parameterizations and on-manifold optimization

Pose composition

"A tutorial on SE(3) transformation parameterizations and on-manifold optimization", J.L. Blanco, Technical report, 2010. (PDF, Bibtex). Updated: 12/SEP/2010.
Abstract: An arbitrary rigid transformation in SE(3) can be separated into two parts, namely, a translation and a rigid rotation. This technical report reviews, under a unifying viewpoint, three common alternatives to representing the rotation part: sets of three (yaw-pitch-roll) Euler angles, orthogonal rotation matrices from SO(3) and quaternions. It will be described: (i) the equivalence between these representations and the formulas for transforming one to each other (in all cases considering the translational and rotational parts as a whole), (ii) how to compose poses in each representation and (iii) how the uncertainty of the poses (when modeled as Gaussian distributions) is affected by these transformations and compositions. Some brief notes are also given about the Jacobians required to implement least-squares optimization on manifolds, an very promising approach in recent SLAM literature. The text reflects which MRPT C++ library functions implement each of the described algorithms. All the implementations have been thoroughly validated by means of unit testing.

Paper:UWB Particle Filter Localization

Screenshot of program "ro-localization"
"Mobile Robot Localization based on Ultra-Wide-Band Ranging: A Particle Filter Approach", Robotics and Autonomous Systems (2009) - PDF

Abstract: This article addresses the problem of mobile robot localization using Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) range measurements. UWB is a radio technology widely used for communications that recently is receiving increasing attention also for positioning applications. In these cases, the position of a mobile transceiver is determined from the distances to a set of fixed, well-localized beacons. Though this is a well-known problem in the scientific literature (the trilateration problem), the peculiarities of UWB range measurements (basically, distance errors and multipath effects) demand a different treatment to other similar solutions as for example those based on laser. This work presents a thorough experimental characterization of UWB ranges within a variety of environments and situations. From these experiments we derive a probabilistic model which is then employed by a particle filter to combine different readings from real UWB beacons as well as the vehicle odometry. To account for the possible offset error due to multipath effects, the state tracked by the particle filter includes the offset of each beacon in addition to the planar robot pose (x,y,φ), both estimated sequentially. We show real experimental results for a robot moving in indoor scenarios covered by three UWB beacons that validate our proposal .

Paper:Stereo Vision Models for RBPF SLAM

Paper: Stereo-specific observation models
"Stereo vision-specific models for Particle Filter-based SLAM", Robotic and Autonomous Systems - PDF.

Abstract:This work addresses the SLAM problem for stereo vision systems under the unified formulation of particle filter methods. In contrast to most existing approaches to visual SLAM, the present method does not rely on restrictive smooth camera motion models, but on computing incremental 6D pose differences from the image flow through a probabilistic visual odometry method. Moreover, our observation model, which considers both the 3D positions and the SIFT descriptors of the landmarks, avoids explicit data association between the observations and the map by marginalizing the observation likelihood over all the possible associations. We have experimentally validated our research with two experiments in indoor scenarios.

Paper:RO-SLAM with SOG

Paper: RO-SLAM with SOGs
"Efficient Probabilistic Range-Only SLAM", IROS 2008 - PDF - Slides PPT
Abstract: This work addresses Range-Only SLAM (RO-SLAM) as the Bayesian inference problem of sequentially tracking a vehicle while estimating the location of a set of beacons without any prior information. The only assumptions are the availability of odometry and a range sensor able of identifying the different beacons. We propose exploiting the conditional independence between each beacon distribution within a Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter (RBPF) for maintaining independent Sum of Gaussians (SOGs) for each map element. It is shown then that a proper probabilistic observation model can be derived for online operation with no need for delayed initializations. We provide a rigorous statistical comparison of this proposal with previous work of the authors where a Monte-Carlo approximation was employed instead for the conditional densities. As verified experimentally, this new proposal represents a significant improvement in accuracy, computation time, and robustness against outliers.

Paper:J.L. Blanco's Phd Thesis

200px-Jlblanco_thesis.jpg
Contributions to Localization, Mapping and Navigation in Mobile Robotics, PhD Thesis, Jose-Luis Blanco-Claraco, November 13th, 2009.
Downloads: PDF (12.6Mb) - Slides (17.5 Mb) - Slides+videos (196 Mb)

Paper:Subjective Local Maps for Hybrid Metric-Topological SLAM

Map-partition_paper.png
Subjective Local Maps for Hybrid Metric-Topological SLAM, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2009 - (PDF).

Abstract: Hybrid maps where local metric sub-maps are kept in the nodes of a graph-based topological structure are gaining relevance as the focus of robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) shifts towards spatial scalability and long-term operation. In this paper we examine the applicability of spectral graph partitioning techniques to automatically generate metric sub-maps by establishing groups in the sequence of observations gathered by the robot. One of the main aims of this work is to provide a probabilistically grounded interpretation of such a partitioning technique in the context of generating these local maps. We also discuss how to apply it to different kinds of sensory data (stereo images and laser range scans) and how to consider them simultaneously. An important feature of our approach is that it implicitly takes into account the intrinsic characteristics of the sensors, such as the sensor field of view, to perform the partitioning instead of applying heuristics supplied by a human as in other works, and thus the robot builds "subjective" local maps. The ideas presented here are supported by experimental results from a real mobile robot as well as simulations for statistical analysis. We discuss the effects of considering different combinations of sensors in the resulting clustering of the environment.
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