Frontier Detection and Reachability Analysis for Efficient 2D Graph-SLAM Based Active Exploration

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrated method for active exploration in 2D graph-SLAM that combines frontier detection with reachability analysis to improve exploration efficiency and effectiveness in indoor environments.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach that integrates frontier detection and reachability analysis within a graph-SLAM framework for active exploration.

Findings

Effective frontier detection in submaps

Reachability analysis ensures reachable frontiers

Demonstrated efficiency in real indoor scenes

Abstract

We propose an integrated approach to active exploration by exploiting the Cartographer method as the base SLAM module for submap creation and performing efficient frontier detection in the geometrically co-aligned submaps induced by graph optimization. We also carry out analysis on the reachability of frontiers and their clusters to ensure that the detected frontier can be reached by robot. Our method is tested on a mobile robot in real indoor scene to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.