Robot-assisted intelligent 3D mapping of unknown cluttered search and rescue environments

In this paper a unique landmark identification method is proposed for identifying large distinguishable landmarks for 3D visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in unknown cluttered urban search and rescue (USAR) environments. The novelty of the method is the utilization of both 3D (i.e., depth images) and 2D images. By utilizing a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)-based approach and incorporating 3D depth imagery, we can achieve more reliable and robust recognition and matching of landmarks from multiple images for 3D mapping of the environment. Preliminary experiments utilizing the proposed methodology verify: (i) its ability to identify clusters of SIFT keypoints in both 3D and 2D images for representation of potential landmarks in the scene, and (ii) the use of the identified landmarks in constructing a 3D map of unknown cluttered USAR environments.