δ-Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Simultaneous Localization and Mapping with an Optimal Kernel-Based Particle Filtering Approach

Under realistic environmental conditions, heuristic-based data association and map management routines often result in divergent map and trajectory estimates in robotic Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM). To address these issues, SLAM solutions have been proposed based on the Random Finite Set (RFS) framework, which models the map and measurements such that the usual requirements of external data association routines and map management heuristics can be circumvented and realistic sensor detection uncertainty can be taken into account. Rao–Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF)-based RFS SLAM solutions have been demonstrated using the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter and subsequently the Labeled Multi-Bernoulli (LMB) filter. In multi-target tracking, the LMB filter, which was introduced as an efficient approximation to the computationally expensive [Formula: see text]-Generalized LMB ([Formula: see text]-GLMB) filter, converts its representation of an LMB distribution to [Formula: see text]-GLMB form during the measurement update step. This not only results in a loss of information yielding inferior results (compared to the [Formula: see text]-GLMB filter) but also fails to take computational advantages in parallelized implementations possible with RBPF-based SLAM algorithms. Similar to state-of-the-art random vector-valued RBPF solutions such as FastSLAM and MH-FastSLAM, the performances of all RBPF-based SLAM algorithms based on the RFS framework also diverge from ground truth over time due to random sampling approaches, which only rely on control noise variance. Further, the methods lose particle diversity and diverge over time as a result of particle degeneracy. To alleviate this problem and further improve the quality of map estimates, a SLAM solution using an optimal kernel-based particle filter combined with an efficient variant of the [Formula: see text]-GLMB filter ([Formula: see text]-GLMB-SLAM) is presented. The performance of the proposed [Formula: see text]-GLMB-SLAM algorithm, referred to as [Formula: see text]-GLMB-SLAM2.0, was demonstrated using simulated datasets and a section of the publicly available KITTI dataset. The results suggest that even with a limited number of particles, [Formula: see text]-GLMB-SLAM2.0 outperforms state-of-the-art RBPF-based RFS SLAM algorithms.