Probabilistic Data Association for Semantic SLAM at Scale
This addresses the critical issue of measurement-to-landmark assignment for SLAM in repetitive environments, which is incremental as it builds on existing semantic SLAM methods.
The paper tackles the problem of data association in semantic SLAM for repetitive environments by using k-best assignment enumeration to compute marginal probabilities in real time, demonstrating effectiveness and speed on the KITTI dataset.
With advances in image processing and machine learning, it is now feasible to incorporate semantic information into the problem of simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM). Previously, SLAM was carried out using lower level geometric features (points, lines, and planes) which are often view-point dependent and error prone in visually repetitive environments. Semantic information can improve the ability to recognise previously visited locations, as well as maintain sparser maps for long term SLAM applications. However, SLAM in repetitive environments has the critical problem of assigning measurements to the landmarks which generated them. In this paper, we use k-best assignment enumeration to compute marginal assignment probabilities for each measurement landmark pair, in real time. We present numerical studies on the KITTI dataset to demonstrate the effectiveness and speed of the proposed framework.