Kimera-Multi: Robust, Distributed, Dense Metric-Semantic SLAM for Multi-Robot Systems

The paper (Tian et al., 2022) presents the first approach for distributed multi-robot dense metric-semantic mapping. In particular, we present Kimera-Multi, a multi-robot system that (i) is robust to spurious loop closures resulting from incorrect place recognition, (ii) is fully distributed and only relies on local communication, and (iii) builds a globally consistent metric-semantic 3D mesh model of the environment in real-time, where faces of the mesh are annotated with semantic labels. Kimera-Multi has been demonstrated in real-tests involving up to 3 robots and trajectories up to 800m, while more recently we have used the system in tests with up to 8 robots and trajectories up to 8km, see (Tian et al., 2023).

The code has been released open-source at: https://github.com/MIT-SPARK/Kimera-Multi.

The paper has been recognized with the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award as the best T-RO paper published in 2022, and has been featured in the IEEE Spectrum article MIT Multirobot Mapping Sets New “Gold Standard”.

References

1. Tian, Y., Chang, Y., Quang, L., Schang, A., Nieto-Granda, C., How, J. P., & Carlone, L. (2023). Resilient and Distributed Multi-Robot Visual SLAM: Datasets, Experiments, and Lessons Learned. IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
   Bibtex

   @inproceedings{Tian23iros-KimeraMultiExperiments,
     author = {Tian, Y. and Chang, Y. and Quang, L. and Schang, A. and Nieto-Granda, C. and How, J.P. and Carlone, L.},
     title = {Resilient and Distributed Multi-Robot Visual {SLAM}: Datasets, Experiments, and Lessons Learned},
     booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)},
     note = {\linkToPdf{https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.04362.pdf},\linkToVideo{https://youtu.be/7yYMRNMdKjY},\linkToCode{https://github.com/MIT-SPARK/Kimera-Multi},\linkToWeb{https://github.com/MIT-SPARK/Kimera-Multi-Data}\award{, Open Data prize honorable mention}},
     pdf = {https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.04362.pdf},
     funding = {DCIST, MathWorks},
     year = {2023}
   }
   

2. Tian, Y., Chang, Y., Arias, F. H., Nieto-Granda, C., How, J. P., & Carlone, L. (2022). Kimera-Multi: Robust, Distributed, Dense Metric-Semantic SLAM for Multi-Robot Systems. IEEE Trans. Robotics.
   Bibtex

   @article{Tian22tro-KimeraMulti,
     title = {{Kimera-Multi}: Robust, Distributed, Dense Metric-Semantic SLAM for Multi-Robot Systems},
     author = {Tian, Y. and Chang, Y. and Arias, F. Herrera and Nieto-Granda, C. and How, J.P. and Carlone, L.},
     journal = {{IEEE} Trans. Robotics},
     note = {accepted, arXiv preprint: 2106.14386, \linkToPdf{https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.14386.pdf}},
     pdf = {https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.14386.pdf},
     funding = {DCIST, LL3, ARA, MathWorks},
     year = {2022}
   }