ORBBuf: A Robust Buffering Method for Remote Visual SLAM

The data loss caused by unreliable network seriously impacts the results of remote visual SLAM systems. From our experiment, a loss of less than 1 second of data can cause a visual SLAM algorithm to lose tracking. We present a novel buffering method, ORBBuf, to reduce the impact of data loss on remote visual SLAM systems. We model the buffering problem as an optimization problem by introducing a similarity metric between frames. To solve the buffering problem, we present an efficient greedy algorithm to discard the frames that have the least impact on the quality of SLAM results. We implement our ORBBuf method on ROS, a widely used middleware framework. Through an extensive evaluation on real-world scenarios and tens of gigabytes of datasets, we demonstrate that our ORBBuf method can be applied to different state-estimation algorithms (DSO and VINS-Fusion), different sensor data (both monocular images and stereo images), different scenes (both indoor and outdoor), and different network environments (both WiFi networks and 4G networks). Our experimental results indicate that the network losses indeed affect the SLAM results, and our ORBBuf method can reduce the RMSE up to 50 times comparing with the Drop-Oldest and Random buffering methods.

Authors

• Yu-Ping Wang 0001
• Zi-Xin Zou
• Cong Wang 0045
• Yue-Jiang Dong
• Lei Qiao 0002
• Dinesh Manocha

Keywords

• Measurement
• Greedy algorithms
• Visualization
• Simultaneous localization and mapping
• Middleware
• Wireless fidelity
• Optimization
• Optimization Problem
• Visual System
• Random Method
• Vision Algorithms
• Stereo Images
• Seconds Of Data
• 4G Networks
• Mean Distance
• Point Cloud
• Feature Points
• Communication Protocol
• Consecutive Frames
• Network Bandwidth
• Common Solution
• Real-world Networks
• Network Reliability
• Buffer Size
• Uniform Manner
• Compression Algorithm
• Network Latency
• Input Data Sequence
• KITTI Dataset
• Raw Pixel
• Different Kinds Of Data
• Feature Point Matching
• Requirements Of Algorithms