A Novel Approach for Lidar-Based Robot Localization in a Scale-Drifted Map Constructed Using Monocular SLAM.

Scale ambiguity and drift are inherent drawbacks of a pure-visual monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system. This problem could be a crucial challenge for other robots with range sensors to perform localization in a map previously built by a monocular camera. In this paper, a metrically inconsistent priori map is made by the monocular SLAM that is subsequently used to perform localization on another robot only using a laser range finder (LRF).

Hitchhiking Robots: A Collaborative Approach for Efficient Multi-Robot Navigation in Indoor Environments.

Hitchhiking is a means of transportation gained by asking other people for a (free) ride. We developed a multi-robot system which is the first of its kind to incorporate hitchhiking in robotics, and discuss its advantages. Our method allows the hitchhiker robot to skip redundant computations in navigation like path planning, localization, obstacle avoidance, and map update by completely relying on the driver robot.

Symbiotic Navigation in Multi-Robot Systems with Remote Obstacle Knowledge Sharing.

Large scale operational areas often require multiple service robots for coverage and task parallelism. In such scenarios, each robot keeps its individual map of the environment and serves specific areas of the map at different times. We propose a knowledge sharing mechanism for multiple robots in which one robot can inform other robots about the changes in map, like path blockage, or new static obstacles, encountered at specific areas of the map.