Efficient Multi-robot Active SLAM

TL;DR

This paper presents an efficient multi-robot active SLAM framework that improves exploration efficiency and mapping accuracy by sharing frontiers and optimizing goal selection, suitable for real-time applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel frontier-sharing strategy and utility function that balances exploration and computational efficiency in multi-robot SLAM.

Findings

Reduced computational overhead compared to existing methods

Enhanced exploration coverage and mapping accuracy

Validated through simulations and real-world experiments

Abstract

Autonomous exploration in unknown environments remains a fundamental challenge in robotics, particularly for applications such as search and rescue, industrial inspection, and planetary exploration. Multi-robot active SLAM presents a promising solution by enabling collaborative mapping and exploration while actively reducing uncertainty. However, existing approaches often suffer from high computational costs and inefficient frontier management, making them computationally expensive for real-time applications. In this paper, we introduce an efficient multi-robot active SLAM framework that incorporates a frontier-sharing strategy to enhance robot distribution in unexplored environments. Our approach integrates a utility function that considers both pose graph uncertainty and path entropy, achieving an optimal balance between exploration coverage and computational efficiency. By filtering and prioritizing goal frontiers, our method significantly reduces computational overhead while preserving high mapping accuracy. The proposed framework has been implemented in ROS and validated through simulations and real-world experiments. Results demonstrate superior exploration performance and mapping quality compared to state-of-the-art approaches.