Indoor laser-based SLAM for micro aerial vehicles

This article presents a laser-based 2D simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm for indoor environments. An adaption and optimization of a ground vehicle SLAM solution (TinySLAM) for the use with Micro Aerial Vehicles is proposed. Optimizations of the map update strategy and a motion model improves the accuracy strongly. An extension to 3D mapping is introduced. The presented algorithm is tested with simulated and real world data. The optimized SLAM solution maps a whole floor of an office building very accurately and achieves embedded real-time capability.