Open Source Mobile Operating Systems LiDAR Software

RTAB-Map (Real-Time Appearance-Based Mapping) is a RGB-D, Stereo and Lidar Graph-Based SLAM approach based on an incremental appearance-based loop closure detector. The loop closure detector uses a bag-of-words approach to determine how likely a new image comes from a previous location or a new location. When a loop closure hypothesis is accepted, a new constraint is added to the map’s graph, then a graph optimizer minimizes the errors in the map. A memory management approach is used to limit the number of locations used for loop closure detection and graph optimization so that real-time constraints on large-scale environments are always respected. RTAB-Map can be used alone with a handheld Kinect, a stereo camera or a 3D lidar for 6DoF mapping, or on a robot equipped with a laser rangefinder for 3DoF mapping.