Constructive Observer Design for Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel Lie group-based observer design for VSLAM that achieves almost semi-global stability, with simulations and UAV experiments demonstrating its effectiveness.

Contribution

It proposes a new Lie group framework for VSLAM observer design, enhancing stability and performance over existing methods.

Findings

The observer achieves almost semi-global asymptotic stability.

Simulations confirm the theoretical stability properties.

UAV experiments demonstrate practical effectiveness.

Abstract

Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (VSLAM) is a well-known problem in robotics with a large range of applications. This paper presents a novel approach to VSLAM by lifting the observer design to a novel Lie group on which the system output is equivariant. The perspective gained from this analysis facilitates the design of a non-linear observer with almost semi-globally asymptotically stable error dynamics. Simulations are provided to illustrate the behaviour of the proposed observer and experiments on data gathered using a fixed-wing UAV flying outdoors demonstrate its performance.