OctoMap: an efficient probabilistic 3D mapping framework based on octrees

Three-dimensional models provide a volumetric representation of space which is important for a variety of robotic applications including flying robots and robots that are equipped with manipulators. In this paper, we present an open-source framework to generate volumetric 3D environment models. Our mapping approach is based on octrees and uses probabilistic occupancy estimation. It explicitly represents not only occupied space, but also free and unknown areas. Furthermore, we propose an octree map compression method that keeps the 3D models compact. Our framework is available as an open-source C++ library and has already been successfully applied in several robotics projects. We present a series of experimental results carried out with real robots and on publicly available real-world datasets. The results demonstrate that our approach is able to update the representation efficiently and models the data consistently while keeping the memory requirement at a minimum.

[1]  Donald Meagher,et al.  Geometric modeling using octree encoding , 1982, Comput. Graph. Image Process..

[2]  Hans P. Moravec,et al.  High resolution maps from wide angle sonar , 1985, Proceedings. 1985 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[3]  John Amanatides,et al.  A Fast Voxel Traversal Algorithm for Ray Tracing , 1987, Eurographics.

[4]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Terrain mapping for a roving planetary explorer , 1989, Proceedings, 1989 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  Ramesh C. Jain,et al.  Building an environment model using depth information , 1989, Computer.

[6]  J. Wilhelms,et al.  Octrees for faster isosurface generation , 1992, TOGS.

[7]  Tony DeRose,et al.  Surface reconstruction from unorganized points , 1992, SIGGRAPH.

[8]  Hans P. Moravec.  Robot spatial perception by stereoscopic vision and 3D evidence grids , 1996 .

[9]  Clément Gosselin,et al.  Probabilistic octree modeling of a 3D dynamic environment , 1997, Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Brian Yamauchi,et al.  A frontier-based approach for autonomous exploration , 1997, Proceedings 1997 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation CIRA'97. 'Towards New Computational Principles for Robotics and Automation'.

[11]  Leif Kobbelt,et al.  Efficient High Quality Rendering of Point Sampled Geometry , 2002, Rendering Techniques.

[12]  Joachim Hertzberg,et al.  An autonomous mobile robot with a 3D laser range finder for 3D exploration and digitalization of indoor environments , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[13]  Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar,et al.  Probabilistic quadtrees for variable-resolution mapping of large environments , 2004 .

[14]  R. Reulke,et al.  Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences , 2005 .

[15]  D. Girardeau-Montaut,et al.  CHANGE DETECTION ON POINTS CLOUD DATA ACQUIRED W ITH A GROUND LASER SCANNER , 2005 .

[16]  Alonzo Kelly,et al.  Toward Reliable Off Road Autonomous Vehicles Operating in Challenging Environments , 2006, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[17]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Multi-Level Surface Maps for Outdoor Terrain Mapping and Loop Closing , 2006, 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[18]  Reinhard Klein,et al.  Eurographics Symposium on Point-based Graphics (2006) Octree-based Point-cloud Compression , 2022 .

[19]  Paul Newman,et al.  Using laser range data for 3D SLAM in outdoor environments , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[20]  Christian Laugier,et al.  Dense Mapping for Range Sensors: Efficient Algorithms and Sparse Representations , 2007, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[21]  Tom Duckett,et al.  Scan registration for autonomous mining vehicles using 3D-NDT: Research Articles , 2007 .

[22]  Leif Kobbelt,et al.  A Surface-Growing Approach to Multi-View Stereo Reconstruction , 2007, 2007 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[23]  Joachim Hertzberg,et al.  Evolving interface design for robot search tasks: Research Articles , 2007 .

[24]  Christian Laugier,et al.  Update Policy of Dense Maps: Efficient Algorithms and Sparse Representation , 2007, FSR.

[25]  Andreas Birk,et al.  3D forward sensor modeling and application to occupancy grid based sensor fusion , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[26]  David Wettergreen,et al.  Real‐Time SLAM with Octree Evidence Grids for Exploration in Underwater Tunnels , 2007, J. Field Robotics.

[27]  Denis Laurendeau,et al.  Mapping and Exploration of Complex Environments Using Persistent 3D Model , 2007, Fourth Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV '07).

[28]  Tom Duckett,et al.  Scan registration for autonomous mining vehicles using 3D‐NDT , 2007, J. Field Robotics.

[29]  Joachim Hertzberg,et al.  6D SLAM—3D mapping outdoor environments , 2007, J. Field Robotics.

[30]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Towards Mapping of Cities , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[31]  Masahiro Fujita,et al.  3D Perception and Environment Map Generation for Humanoid Robot Navigation , 2008, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[32]  Ian D. Reid,et al.  Adaptive relative bundle adjustment , 2009, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[33]  Winston Churchill,et al.  The New College Vision and Laser Data Set , 2009, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[34]  Luc Van Gool,et al.  In-hand scanning with online loop closure , 2009, 2009 IEEE 12th International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops, ICCV Workshops.

[35]  Martial Hebert,et al.  Accurate rough terrain estimation with space-carving kernels , 2009, Robotics: Science and Systems.

[36]  Maren Bennewitz,et al.  Humanoid robot localization in complex indoor environments , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[37]  Huosheng Hu,et al.  3D mapping with multi-resolution occupied voxel lists , 2010, Auton. Robots.

[38]  Matei T. Ciocarlie,et al.  Towards Reliable Grasping and Manipulation in Household Environments , 2010, ISER.

[39]  Surya P. N. Singh,et al.  Hybrid elevation maps: 3D surface models for segmentation , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[40]  Jizhong Xiao,et al.  Multi-volume occupancy grids: An efficient probabilistic 3D mapping model for micro aerial vehicles , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[41]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  OctoMap : A Probabilistic , Flexible , and Compact 3 D Map Representation for Robotic Systems , 2010 .

[42]  Achim J. Lilienthal,et al.  Path planning in 3D environments using the Normal Distributions Transform , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[43]  Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[44]  Andreas Nüchter,et al.  Efficient processing of large 3D point clouds , 2011, 2011 XXIII International Symposium on Information, Communication and Automation Technologies.

[45]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Hierarchies of octrees for efficient 3D mapping , 2011, 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[46]  Alexander Kleiner,et al.  A frontier-void-based approach for autonomous exploration in 3d , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics.

[47]  Oliver Birbach,et al.  Experiences in building a visual SLAM system from open source components , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[48]  Paul Newman,et al.  Choosing where to go: Complete 3D exploration with stereo , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[49]  Horst-Michael Groß,et al.  Attention-driven monocular scene reconstruction for obstacle detection, robot navigation and map building , 2011, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[50]  Marc Pollefeys,et al.  Autonomous obstacle avoidance and maneuvering on a vision-guided MAV using on-board processing , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[51]  Nico Blodow,et al.  Autonomous semantic mapping for robots performing everyday manipulation tasks in kitchen environments , 2011, 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[52]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Autonomous miniature blimp navigation with online motion planning and re-planning , 2011, 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[53]  Andrew W. Fitzgibbon,et al.  KinectFusion: Real-time dense surface mapping and tracking , 2011, 2011 10th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality.

[54]  Ronald Parr,et al.  Textured occupancy grids for monocular localization without features , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[55]  Dieter Fox,et al.  Manipulator and object tracking for in-hand 3D object modeling , 2011, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[56]  Daniel Maier,et al.  Real-time navigation in 3D environments based on depth camera data , 2012, 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012).

[57]  Maren Bennewitz,et al.  Improved proposals for highly accurate localization using range and vision data , 2012, 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[58]  Nico Blodow,et al.  Real-time compression of point cloud streams , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[59]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  A benchmark for the evaluation of RGB-D SLAM systems , 2012, 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[60]  Maren Bennewitz,et al.  Navigation in three-dimensional cluttered environments for mobile manipulation , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[61]  John J. Leonard,et al.  Kintinuous: Spatially Extended KinectFusion , 2012, AAAI 2012.

[62]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  An evaluation of the RGB-D SLAM system , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.