DP-SLAM 2.0

Probabilistic approaches have proved very successful at addressing the basic problems of robot localization and mapping and they have shown great promise on the combined problem of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). One approach to SLAM assumes relatively sparse, relatively unambiguous landmarks and builds a Kalman filter over landmark positions. Other approaches assume dense sensor data which individually are not very distinctive, such as those available from a laser range finder. In earlier work, we presented an algorithm called DP-SLAM, which provided a very accurate solution to the latter case by efficiently maintaining a joint distribution over robot maps and poses. The approach assumed an extremely accurate laser range finder and a deterministic environment. In this work we demonstrate an improved map representation and laser penetration model, an improvement in the asymptotic efficiency of the algorithm, and empirical results of loop closing on a high resolution map of a very challenging domain.