Relative Navigation Framework for Single Agent SLAM:

Developing a frontend-backend framework for GPS denied guidance navigation and control of autonomous agents. In this work we are developing a frontend EKF which produces delta-pose like odometry measurements w.r.t a local reference and a backend pose-graph which optimizes over the odometry measurements and also incorporates loop closures and intermittent GPS measurements to produce a globally consistent map. Separating the frontend insulates flight-critical estimation and control processes which happen at a right rate from the large global update which is used for guidance. We are interested in developing a simple and easy to use system which can work for a large number of sensors and on a wide variety of robotic platforms. We also aim to demonstrate the ability of the system to work on both an indoor and outdoor environment.

Publications

Zhang, Jincheng, Prashant Ganesh, Kyle Volle, Andrew Willis, and Kevin Brink. “Low-Bandwidth and Compute-Bound RGB-D Planar Semantic SLAM.” Sensors 21, no. 16 (2021): 5400.

Ellingson, Gary, Kevin Brink, and Tim McLain. “Cooperative Relative Navigation of Multiple Aircraft in Global Positioning System-Denied/Degraded Environments.” Journal of Aerospace Information Systems 17, no. 8 (2020): 470-480.

Koch, Daniel P., David O. Wheeler, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain, and Kevin M. Brink. “Relative multiplicative extended Kalman filter for observable GPS-denied navigation.” The International Journal of Robotics Research 39, no. 9 (2020): 1085-1121.

Brink, Kevin, Ryan Sherrill, Jamie Godwin, Jincheng Zhang, and Andrew Willis. “Maplets: An Efficient Approach for Cooperative SLAM Map Building Under Communication and Computation Constraints.” In 2020 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium (PLANS), pp. 367-374. IEEE, 2020.

Jackson, James, Kevin Brink, Brendon Forsgren, David Wheeler, and Timothy McLain. “Direct Relative Edge Optimization, A Robust Alternative for Pose Graph Optimization.” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 4, no. 2 (2019): 1932-1939.

Sahawneh, Laith R., and Kevin M. Brink. “Factor graphs-based multi-robot cooperative localization: A study of shared information influence on optimization accuracy and consistency.” In Proceedings of the ION 2017 International Technical Meeting. 2017.