Lightweight RGB-D SLAM System for Search and Rescue Robots

Search and rescue robots ought to be autonomous, as it enables to keep the human personnel out of dangerous areas. To achieve desirable level of the autonomy both environment mapping and reliable self-localization have to be implemented. In this paper we analyse the application of a fast, lightweight RGB-D Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system for robots involved in indoor/outdoor search and rescue missions. We demonstrate that under some conditions the RGB-D sensors provide data reliable enough even for outdoor, real-time SLAM. Experiments are performed on a legged robot and a wheeled robot, using two representative RGB-D sensors: the Asus Xtion Pro Live and the recently introduced Microsoft Kinect ver. 2.

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