Research Paper:
Reducing Bandwidth Usage in CVSLAM: A Novel Approach to Map Point Selection and Efficient Data Compression
Weiqiang Zhang , Lan Cheng , Xinying Xu , and Zhimin Hu
College of Electrical and Power Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology
No.79 West Street Yingze, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030024, China
Corresponding author
In the field of collaborative visual simultaneous localization and mapping (CVSLAM), efficient data communication poses a significant challenge, particularly in environments with limited bandwidth. To address this issue, we introduce a method aimed at reducing communication consumption. Our approach starts with a strategic culling of map points, aiming at maximizing pose-visibility and expanding spatial diversity to effectively eliminate redundant data in CVSLAM. We achieve this by formulating the problem of maximizing pose-visibility and spatial diversity as a minimum-cost maximum-flow graph optimization problem. Subsequently, we apply finite state entropy encoding for the compression of visual information, further alleviating bandwidth constraints. To verify the proposed method, we implement it within a centralized collaborative monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system. Our approach has been tested on publicly available datasets and in real-world scene. The results show a prominent reduction in bandwidth usage by 49% while maintaining mapping accuracy and without introducing additional latency, confirming its effectiveness in a multi-agent system setting.
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