Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM

In autonomous applications, a vehicle requires reliable estimates of its location and information about the world around it. To capture prior knowledge of the uncertainties in a vehicle's motion response to input commands and sensor measurements, this fundamental task has been cast as probabili...

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Main Authors: Adams, M., Mullane, J., Vo, Ba-Ngu
Format: Journal Article
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46417
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author Adams, M.
Mullane, J.
Vo, Ba-Ngu
author_facet Adams, M.
Mullane, J.
Vo, Ba-Ngu
author_sort Adams, M.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description In autonomous applications, a vehicle requires reliable estimates of its location and information about the world around it. To capture prior knowledge of the uncertainties in a vehicle's motion response to input commands and sensor measurements, this fundamental task has been cast as probabilistic Simultaneous Localization and Map building (SLAM). SLAM has been investigated as a stochastic filtering problem in which sensor data is compressed into features, which are consequently stacked in a vector, referred to as the map. Inspired by developments in the tracking literature, recent research in SLAM has recast the map as a Random Finite Set (RFS) instead of a random vector, with huge mathematical consequences. With the application of recently formulated Finite Set Statistics (FISST), such a representation circumvents the need for fragile feature management and association routines, which are often the weakest component in vector based SLAM algorithms. This tutorial demonstrates that true sensing uncertainty lies not only in the spatial estimates of a feature, but also in its existence. This gives rise to sensor probabilities of detection and false alarm, as well as spatial uncertainty values. By re-addressing the fundamentals of SLAM under an RFS framework, it will be shown that it is possible to estimate the map in terms of true feature number, as well as location. The concepts are demonstrated with short range radar, which detects multiple features, but yields many false measurements. Comparison of vector, and RFS SLAM algorithms shows the superior robustness of RFS based SLAM to such realistic sensing defects.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-464172017-09-13T13:37:32Z Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM Adams, M. Mullane, J. Vo, Ba-Ngu In autonomous applications, a vehicle requires reliable estimates of its location and information about the world around it. To capture prior knowledge of the uncertainties in a vehicle's motion response to input commands and sensor measurements, this fundamental task has been cast as probabilistic Simultaneous Localization and Map building (SLAM). SLAM has been investigated as a stochastic filtering problem in which sensor data is compressed into features, which are consequently stacked in a vector, referred to as the map. Inspired by developments in the tracking literature, recent research in SLAM has recast the map as a Random Finite Set (RFS) instead of a random vector, with huge mathematical consequences. With the application of recently formulated Finite Set Statistics (FISST), such a representation circumvents the need for fragile feature management and association routines, which are often the weakest component in vector based SLAM algorithms. This tutorial demonstrates that true sensing uncertainty lies not only in the spatial estimates of a feature, but also in its existence. This gives rise to sensor probabilities of detection and false alarm, as well as spatial uncertainty values. By re-addressing the fundamentals of SLAM under an RFS framework, it will be shown that it is possible to estimate the map in terms of true feature number, as well as location. The concepts are demonstrated with short range radar, which detects multiple features, but yields many false measurements. Comparison of vector, and RFS SLAM algorithms shows the superior robustness of RFS based SLAM to such realistic sensing defects. 2013 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46417 10.1109/MITS.2013.2260596 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers restricted
spellingShingle Adams, M.
Mullane, J.
Vo, Ba-Ngu
Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title_full Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title_fullStr Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title_full_unstemmed Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title_short Circumventing the Feature Association Problem in SLAM
title_sort circumventing the feature association problem in slam
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46417