Appearance-Based Minimalistic Metric Slam

This paper addresses the problem of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for the case of very small, resource-limited robots which have poor odometry and can typically only carry a single monocular camera. We propose a modification to the standard SLAM algorithm in which the assumption that the robots can obtain metric distance/bearing information to landmarks is relaxed. Instead, the robot registers a distinctive sensor "signature", based on its current location, which is used to match robot positions. In our formulation of this non-linear estimation problem, we infer implicit position measurements from an image recognition algorithm. The Iterated form of the Extended Kalman Filter (IEKF) is employed to process all measurements.