학술논문

Incremental Non-Gaussian Inference for SLAM Using Normalizing Flows
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Robotics IEEE Trans. Robot. Robotics, IEEE Transactions on. 39(2):1458-1475 Apr, 2023
Subject
Robotics and Control Systems
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Simultaneous localization and mapping
Inference algorithms
Approximation algorithms
Task analysis
Particle separators
Belief propagation
Random variables
Bayes tree
distribution estimation
non-Gaussian
normalizing flows
SLAM
Language
ISSN
1552-3098
1941-0468
Abstract
This article presents normalizing flows for incremental smoothing and mapping (NF-iSAM), a novel algorithm for inferring the full posterior distribution in SLAM problems with nonlinear measurement models and non-Gaussian factors. NF-iSAM exploits the expressive power of neural networks, and trains normalizing flows to model and sample the full posterior. By leveraging the Bayes tree, NF-iSAM enables efficient incremental updates similar to iSAM2, albeit in the more challenging non-Gaussian setting. We demonstrate the advantages of NF-iSAM over state-of-the-art point and distribution estimation algorithms using range-only SLAM problems with data association ambiguity. NF-iSAM presents superior accuracy in describing the posterior beliefs of continuous variables (e.g., position) and discrete variables (e.g., data association).