AFO-SLAM: an improved visual SLAM in dynamic scenes using acceleration of feature extraction and object detection

Abstract In visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems, traditional methods often excel due to rigid environmental assumptions, but face challenges in dynamic environments. To address this, learning-based approaches have been introduced, but their expensive computing costs hinder real-time performance, especially on embedded mobile platforms. In this article, we propose a robust and real-time visual SLAM method towards dynamic environments using acceleration of feature extraction and object detection (AFO-SLAM). First, AFO-SLAM employs an independent object detection thread that utilizes YOLOv5 to extract semantic information and identify the bounding boxes of moving objects. To preserve the background points within these boxes, depth information is utilized to segment target foreground and background with only a single frame, with the points of the foreground area considered as dynamic points and then rejected. To optimize performance, CUDA program accelerates feature extraction preceding point removal. Finally, extensive evaluations are performed on both TUM RGB-D dataset and real scenes using a low-power embedded platform. Experimental results demonstrate that AFO-SLAM offers a balance between accuracy and real-time performance on embedded platforms, and enables the generation of dense point cloud maps in dynamic scenarios.