Line-based SLAM using non-overlapping cameras in an urban environment

We propose a method of line-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using non-overlapping multiple cameras for vehicles running in an urban environment. It uses corresponding line segments between images taken by different frames and different cameras. The contribution is a novel line segment matching algorithm by warping processing based on urban structures. This idea significantly improves the accuracy of line segment matching when viewing direction are very different, so that a number of correspondences between front-view and rear-view cameras can be found and the accuracy of SLAM can be improved. Additionally, to enhance the accuracy of SLAM we apply a geometrical constraint of urban area for initial estimation of 3D mapping of line segments and optimization by bundle adjustment. We can further improve the accuracy of SLAM by combining points and lines. The position error is stable within 1.5m for the entire image dataset evaluated in this paper. The estimation accuracy of our method is as high as that of ground truth captured by RTK-GPS. Our high accuracy SLAM algorithm can be apply for generating a road map represented by line segments. According to an evaluation of our generating map, true positive rate around the vehicle exceeding 70% is achieved.