“If you think the second robot in the picture doesn’t look stable enough, you”ll be surprised.
Main topic of this article is going to be SLAM and mapping with ROS. We’ll use Bittle, an agile quadruped robot from Petoi, that finished their Kickstarter campaign last month with huge success.
First let’s start with some theory.
What is SLAM?
SLAM stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping - it a set of algorithms, that allows a computer to create a 2D or 3D map of space and determine it’s location in it. While by itself, SLAM is not Navigation, of course having a map and knowing your position on it is a prerequisite for navigating from point A to point B.
We can use various sensors to receive data about the environment that can be used for mapping
Laser Scanners (one-dimensional and 2D- (sweeping) laser rangefinders)
Cameras(Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D)
Sonar sensors
Tactile sensors
Others
In practice a lot of times, a combination of sensors is used, and later a fusion algorithm is applied, for example extended Kalman filter, to obtain precise information.”