2022 7th International Conference on Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research
Lidar-Based Cooperative SLAM with Different
Parameters
2022 7th International Conference on Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research (ICMERR) | 978-1-6654-9051-1/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICMERR56497.2022.10097789
1st Sooraj Sunil 2nd Saeed Mozaffari
Electrical and Computer Electrical and Computer
Engineering Engineering
University of Windsor University of Windsor
Windsor, Canada Windsor, Canada
sunil11@uwindsor.ca Saeed.mozaffari@uwindsor.ca
5th Shahpour Alirezaee
Mechanical, Automotive, and
Material Engineering
University of Windsor
Windsor, Canada
s.alirezaee@uwindsor.ca
Abstract—This paper presents a feature-based map merging
approach through detecting, describing, and matching geometric
features between the maps. The key contribution of this work is
to identify the effective method for merging maps that are
developed by varying the grid resolution and scan rate
parameters. The map data sets are created by Lidar mounted on
the QCar mobile robot platform. The comparison of feature
detection methods to register map images at different scale is
presented. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is
validated based on the map fusion assumptions using real-world
data. Also, SLAM (robot motion) is carried out on the merged
global map (developed by proposed map fusion method).
Keywords—Occupancy grid map, map merging, feature
matching, Lidar
I. INTRODUCTION
Many existing methods [1, 2, 3–6] primarily focus on
homogeneous information for map merging. However, there
arise heterogeneous scenarios during collaborative mapping
due to the differences in map properties, type of sensors and
even the type of the robot itself [1]. Heterogeneous map
merging is relatively less addressed area of research when
compared to homogeneous case. There exist relatively few
literatures even for the 3D sensors [7, 8]. The heterogeneous
multi-sensor tracking for an autonomous surface vehicle is
presented in [9]. Here data from 10 cameras, radar, and a Lidar
is fused together for navigation of the urban autonomous
passenger ferry prototype/research platform. The occupancy
grid map is used to solve the fusion of multi-vehicle and multi-
sensor data [10]. The probability level and spatial level based
occupancy grid map is generated.
Out of all the existing robotic environment representation,
occupancy grid maps are the most common choice [11–14];
especially for mobile robot navigation. A critical variable in the
representation of an environment is the grid resolution. It might
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3rd Singh Rajmeet 4th Behnam Shahrrava
Mechanical. Automotive, and Electrical and Computer
Material Engineering Engineering
University of Windsor University of Windsor
Windsor, Canada Windsor, Canada
rsbhourji@uwindsor.ca shahrrav@uwindsor.ca
appear to be a minor detail but it impacts the overall memory
(size of the map), computation time, and quality of the maps
[14]. Similarly, the rate at which the scans are fed to the SLAM
algorithm can also have a notable impact on the computation
time and quality of the maps. These variables can be different
for the individual robots in a collaborative system due to the
available computational resources. Such differences in grid
resolutions and sampling frequencies introduce heterogeneity
in the collaborative system. A special instance of
heterogeneous map fusion is when prior information is
integrated to the occupancy grid maps. This include floor maps
[15–17], semantic blueprints [15, 18], underground pipe
network maps [16], or even hand-drawn sketches. The
integrated information is known as hybrid maps. It has many
advantages such as semantic classification [15] and accurate
localization [18] which suits time critical applications such as
search and rescue [17].
In mobile robotics, due to limited computation and sensor
cost either 2D LIDARs, low-cost cameras or both are
predominantly preferred over 3D LIDAR for navigation and
mapping tasks. The LIDAR and camera sensory data has
different resolutions and error models. Thus, this introduces a
new challenge in heterogeneous map fusion which is
integration of data obtained from different type of perception
sensors. To the best of our knowledge, there exists no literature
that deals with 2D occupancy map fusion for heterogeneous
sensors.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II describe the
feature-based map fusion problem, various evaluation methods
and evaluation results based on feature detectability, matching
efficiency, and transformation reliability. Also describes the
proposed solution, Section III presents the effectiveness of the
proposed method based on the real-world experimental results,
and lastly conclusions are drawn in Section IV.
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 II. FEATURE EVALUATION
The computation complexity for constructing maps is
crucial as it directly influence the performance of mapping
algorithms. Many factors such as type of sensors, SLAM
algorithm, available computational resource, robot trajectory,
or even the environment itself can determine the overall
computation time. Two common parameters which can be used
to tune the properties of an occupancy map are the grid
resolution and the scan rate. During collaborative scenarios, a
robot equipped with a powerful CPU can construct maps using
higher scanning frequency and grid resolution
whereas low-cost processors have to settle for a restrictive
Fig. 1. Computation time (Ct) for each map in the data set
range of resolutions and frequencies. In this chapter, dissimilar
maps of the same environment generated with different values
Table I summarizes the details such as the size of map (m
for grid resolution (r), scan rate (T) or both are referred to as
x n) and the total number of scans (Ns) incorporated into each
heterogeneous maps.
map.
The key challenge of collaborative mapping is the map
alignment. This is done by manual annotation. The various key TABLE I. INDIVIDUAL MAPS USED FOR EVALUATING DIFFERENT
FEATURE DETECTION METHODS
point detector methods such as SIFT, SURF, KLT, and Harris
were accessed in [19] based on manually verifying the correct T (Hz) ≈ 2.5 ≈2 ≈ 1.66
pairings. The root mean square error (RMSE) is used to r
Ns mxn Ns mxn Ns mxn
(cells/m)
compare different map alignment methods via visual inspection 8 204 248 x 272 164 248 x 272 NA NA
[17]. In general, manual labeling is time consuming, prone to 10 204 310 x 340 164 310 x 340 136 310 x 340
errors, and not suitable for real time applications. 12 204 372 x 408 164 372 x 408 136 372 x 408
14 204 434 x 476 164 434 x 476 136 434 x 476
In this paper, a set of evaluation techniques are proposed to 16 204 496 x 544 164 496 x 544 136 496 x 544
compare feature-based alignment for matching heterogeneous 18 204 558 x 612 164 558 x 612 136 558 x 612
occupancy grid map. The following variables for grid map are 20 204 620 x 680 164 620 x 680 136 620 x 680
assessed:
Figure 2 shows four maps from the map data set; two maps
 Grid resolution, r: The number of grid cells used to required least values of r and T and most computation time,
represent a meter (cells per meter) of the environment. and rest two map failing senarios for low values of r and T.
 Scan rate, T: The rate at which the sensor samples are
fed to the SLAM algorithm.
The generation of the heterogeneous map by varying the
grid resolution and scan rate parameters of the occupancy grid
map and proposing the techniques for map merging by feature-
based alignment method is the novelty of the work.
A. Evaluation Method
1) Map data set: Single robot SLAM has numerous
evaluation data sets [19, 20, 21]. In this paper, 27 sets of 2D
laser maps of a real world indoor environment is generated (a)
using the real robot platform QCar (Fig. 1). Each map was
generated based on the following steps:
a) Data collection: The scans were captured at 10 Hz
using 360º 2D laser scanner (RPLIDAR-A2) of the QCar.
b) SLAM algorithm: The SLAM algorithm is used to
build the environment map based on the collected scans data.
c) Heterogenity: For heterogeneity the variation of grid
resolution and frequency of scans were made.
Figure 1 illustrates the values considered for r and T along
with time taken by the SLAM algorithm to complete the map.
(b)
As depicted from Fig. 1, the values of r and T greatly
influence the algorithm’s performance and computation Fig. 2. Occupancy maps along with the optimized pose graph for different
complexity. It can also be observed that the mapping process values of r and T. (a) maps with least (r = 8; T = 1.25) and most computation
time (r = 20; T = 2.5), (b) two inaccurate maps computed for extreme values
fails at low values for r and T e.g. inaccurate map for T ≈ 1.25 of r and T
Hz and r ≥ 14 cells/m.

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 2) Evaluation description: Common feature detection The metric is based on the ratio of number of putative
methods are compared to investigate their performance for matches to the number of inliers calculated from an image pair.
matching heteregenous grid maps as mentioned in Table 1. The precision of a keypoint detector is calculated as follows
The following keypoints such as matching efficiency, [22]:
computation time, and reliability of estimated map alignment # inliers 
parameters are used to assesed the detectors. precision 
# correspondances
3) Occupancy matrix: Each map from Table 1 is
represented as a probability matrix M{ r, T} of m rows and n As depicted from Fig. 3 the ORB detector find the
columns. Say, M{ r = 10, T = 2.5} refers to the occupancy matrix of maximum number of features and SIFT detector extract
the map with resolution 10 cells/m and scan rate minimum number of points.
approximately as 2.5 Hz. The values of probability occupancy For geometric transformation, RANSAC algorithm require
matix are set as follows: occupied cells to 1, obstacle-free atleast two correctly matched pairs of features. The accuracy
cells to 0, and the unknown cells to -1. of estimated geometric alignmnet parameters depends on the
a) Geometric transformations: The scaling of the map in higher numbers of inlier pairs. Therefore, RANSAC algorithm
heteregenous scenerio is the important parameter. The scaling is considered to compare the efficiency as well as reliability of
factor λ for heteregenous map can be computed using the different feature detection and description methods.
following two methods:
 Estimating λ based on values of map resolutions r : The
required scaling factor λ to align source map matrix to
the size of target map matrix can be calculated as λ =
resolution of source matrix / resolutions of target
matrix.
 Estimating λ based on similarity transform: The inliers
during the RANSAC stage are searched for a similarity
transform model. Therefore, λ is considered as a
parameter to be estimated.
B. Evaluation Results
1) Feature detectability: Figure 3 shows the total number
of the keypoints detected by different methods.
2) Matching efficiency: The efficiency of feature detectors
is depends on the repeatability score of keypoints. A metric
used to calculate the feature detection, extraction, and (a) Heteregenous resolution map merging as similarity transform problem
matching altogether is the inlier precision.


(b) Heteregenous resolution map merging as rigid transform problem

Fig. 4. Inlier precision of KAZE, ORB, SIFT, and SURF methods
Fig. 3. Feature detectability testing
The inliers were computed by matching the map from
Table I for T ≈ 2.5 with other maps. The following setting
were done to conduct random trail by using MSAC algorithm:

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number of trails = 1000 and acceptance confidence level =
N 
     .2
99%. The methods such as KAZE, SIFT, SURF, and ORB 1
met the map transformation matrix requirement. The percision RMSE 
N
was calculated for matching the maps at different resolutions n 1
using the similarity transformation method (method 1) as well where,  indicates the estimated rotation parameters and N
as the rigid transform method (method 2) as shown in Fig. 4. denotes the number of Monte Carlo runs. The estimated
Also inlier cardinality is calculated for both rigid and rotation  can be calculated as:
similarity transform model and shown in Fig. 5.
2) Transformation reliability: The drawback of the 
  a tan 2  sin ,  cos   
MSAC algorithm is that results may not be exactly identical
because of the randomized nature. Therefore, the RMSE where λ is the scaling factor.
method is used to compare the reliability of different features Figure 6 illustrates the RMSE calculated over 100 runs for
detectors based on the alignment error. matching heteregenous maps with 100 % overlap. The
estimated rotation  was calculated for each map by using eq.
(3).

(a) Heteregenous resolution map merging as similarity transform problem

Fig. 6. RMSE and average feature matching time for change in resolution

The average time for each feature detector and descriptor

was calculated as:

(b) Heteregenous resolution map merging as rigid transform problem Avg _ time  t t t t
Fig. 5. Inlier cardinality returned by the MSAC algorithm for KAZE, ORB,
description det ection matching MSAC (4)
SIFT, and SURF methods
where t , t , t and t are time
Here, the RMSE is used to compare feature detectors det ection description matching MSAC
based on their alignment error. The RMSE of MSAC with taken for detecting the feature, describing the detected features,
respect to the rotation θ can be calculated as follows: matching the descriptors and fitting the inliers using MSAC.

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 As depicted from Fig. 6, the KAZE method demonstrated
less rotation error as compared to other methods. However, it
is the slowest in terms of computation time. Also, the SURF
and ORB methods were fast out of which the SURF had better
error performance. Figure 7 shows the RMSE and average
feature matching time for change in sample rate for 100 runs.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In this section, the proposed heterogeneous map merging
method is implemented on the real prototype mobile robot.
Real-world experiments were conducted using multiple QCars.
The QCars were controlled via teleoperation mode and the
environment was scanned using the laser scanner. Figure 8
shows the QCar (Quanser) mobile robot platform for
conducting the experiments. The QCar is equipped with wide
range of low-cost sensors such as 2D lidar, RGBD camera, 9
axis IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), wheel encoder and an
onboard computer to carry out various mapping and
navigation tasks.
To merge maps at different scale, we require the scaling
factor in addition to rotation and translation. Based on the
scale change, the moving map can be rescaled to the same size
as the fixed map.
Fig. 7. RMSE and average feature matching time for change in sample rate
Fig. 8. QCar model from Quanser
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Lets assume that fm is the fixed map and mm is the moving
map. Figure 9 (a) and (b) shows the two local maps but with
different grid resolutions. Figure 9 (c) shows the global map
obtained as a result of trnasformation mm to fm then to global
connrdinates.
Figure 9 (d), shows the pixel locations of the occupied
cells are overlaid for three resulting global maps. The fixed
map is fm with resolution rf = 25 cells/m. Whereas, three
moving maps mm of different resolutions rm = 10,20,25 cell/m.
As depicted form Fig. 9 a consistent transformation to
transform mm → fm.
A. Motion Planning
One of the important applications of robotic maps is robot
motion planning. The experiment is conducted to plan the
motion for a robot using rapid exploring random tree (RRT)
algorithm. The objective is to find a collision-free path for the
start (user-input) and end point location in the merge map.
Figure 10, shows the path planning results computed using
global maps obtained as a result of map fusion.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 9. Map merging with different grid resolutions (rf = 25, rm = 10 cells/m):
(a) local map, fm, (b) local map, mm, (c) merged global map, Gm, and (d)
occupied pixel locations of three global maps obtained after merging maps
with different grid resolution
Fig. 10. Path planning using RRT algorithm
 IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have presented an efficient algorithm for
fusion of heterogeneous map. The grid resolution and scan
rate parameters are used to compute the coordinate
transformation between two maps created by the Lidar
mounted on the QCar (Quanser) mobile robot. The various
well-known feature detector methods such as ORB, KAZE,
SIFT, and SURF are used and compared for heterogeneous
map merging purpose. The KAZE method has shown best
performance with respect to error and number of inliers.
Therefore, KAZE is highly reliable and comparable accuracy
when compared to other methods. Finally, the effectiveness of
the proposed map merging method was tested for real-world
scenarios. The QCar mobile robot platform was used for
validation of the proposed method. The robot motion planning
results on global map were effective. A future extension of
this work will be to focus on use of different type of mobile
platforms and different sensors (camera and Lidar) in a multi-
robot system.
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