Visual slam with a rgb-d camera on a quadrotor uav using on-board processing

Abstract

In this article, we present a high accuracy system for real-time localization and mapping using a RGB-D camera. With the use the RGB-D sensor Microsoft Kinect and the small and powerful computer Intel Stick Core M3 Processor, our system can run the computation and sensing required for SLAM on-board the UAV, removing the dependence on unreliable wireless communication. We use visual odometry, loop closure and graph optimization to achieve this purpose. Our approach is able to perform accurate and efficient on-board SLAM by analyzing data and maps generated on several tests of the system.