Integrated Laser and Camera Sensor For Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)

This paper describes a landmark based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm that uses an integrated laser-camera sensor based on the Kalman filter framework. The proposed method exploits the beneficial aspects of each sensor to overcome the disadvantages of the other sensor. It is shown that through the use an integrated sensor a higher number of landmarks can be recovered from the environment to enhance the performance of the SLAM filter. Experimental results and important statistics of the filter are provided for the performance verification and characterization of the filter.