Wi-Closure: Reliable and Efficient Search of Inter-robot Loop Closures Using Wireless Sensing
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In this paper we propose a novel algorithm, Wi-Closure, to improve computational efficiency and robustness of loop closure detection in multi-robot SLAM. Our approach decreases the computational overhead of classical approaches by pruning the search space of potential loop closures, prior to evaluation by a typical multi-robot SLAM pipeline. Wi-Closure achieves this by identifying candidates that are spatially close to each other by using sensing over the wireless communication signal between robots, even when they are operating in non-line-of-sight or in remote areas of the environment from one another. We demonstrate the validity of our approach in simulation and hardware experiments. Our results show that using Wi-closure greatly reduces computation time, by 54 multi-robot SLAM baseline. Importantly, this is achieved without sacrificing accuracy. Using Wi-Closure reduces absolute trajectory estimation error by 99 in simulation and 89.2 part to Wi-Closure's ability to avoid catastrophic optimization failure that typically occurs with classical approaches in challenging repetitive environments.
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