Image feature-based real-time RGB-D 3D SLAM with GPU acceleration

Abstract

This paper proposes an image feature-based real-time RGB-D (Red-Green-Blue Depth) 3D SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) system. RGB-D data from Kinect style sensors contain a 2D image and per-pixel depth information. 6-DOF (Degree-of-Freedom) visual odometry is obtained through the 3D-RANSAC (RANdom SAmple Consensus) algorithm with 2D image features and depth data. For speed up extraction of features, parallel computation is performed with GPU acceleration. After a feature manager detects a loop closure, a graph-based SLAM algorithm optimizes trajectory of the sensor and builds a 3D point cloud based map.