Efficient Onbard RGBD-SLAM for Autonomous MAVs

Abstract — We present a computationally inexpensive RGBD-SLAM solution taylored to the application on autonomous MAVs, which enables our MAV to fly in an unknown en-vironment and create a map of its surroundings completely autonomously, with all computations running on its onboard computer. We achieve this by implementing efficient meth-ods for both tracking its current location with respect to a heavily processed previously seen RGBD image (keyframe) and efficient relative registration of a set of keyframes using bundle adjustment with depth constraints as a front-end for pose graph optimization. We prove the accuracy and efficiency of our system based on a public benchmark dataset and demonstrate that the proposed method enables our quadrotor to fly autonomously. I