RatSLAM

RatSLAM is an appearance based topological SLAM system inspired by the hippocampus.
Further information

Authors
Michael Milford (algorithm); Gordon Wyeth (algorithm); David Ball (code); Scott Heath (code);

Get the Source Code via SVN
svn co https://svn.openslam.org/data/svn/openratslam

Long Description
RatSLAM is a robot navigation and SLAM system based on computational models of the hippocampus. The approach uses a combination of appearance based visual scene matching, competitive attractor networks, and a semi-metric topological map representation. The approach has been proven in a real tiem 40 hour robot delivery task, mapping an entire Australian suburb and on Oxford's New College dataset. Notably, RatSLAM works well on images obtained from cheap cameras. The RatSLAM system contrasts many of the other SLAM approaches that involve expensive precision laser sensors and occupancy grids.


Input Data
OpenRatSLAM takes mono images and odometry as standard ROS messages. The images can be forward facing or omnidirectional and can be high or low quality.

Logfile Format
ROSbag

Type of Map
topological maps

Hardware/Software Requirements
Linux/Unix, Robot Operating System (ROS)
Boost
Irrlicht (if visualisation is needed)

Papers Describing the Approach
David Ball, Scott Heath, Janet Wiles, Gordon Wyeth, Peter Corke, Michael Milford: OpenRatSLAM: an open source brain-based SLAM system, Autonomous Robots, 2013 (link)

Michael Milford, Gordon Wyeth: Persistent navigation and mapping using a biologically inspired SLAM system, International Journal of Robotics Research, 2010 (link)

License Information
This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The authors allow the users of OpenSLAM.org to use and modify the source code for their own research. Any commercial application, redistribution, etc has to be arranged between users and authors individually and is not covered by OpenSLAM.org.

OpenRatSLAM is released under the GNU GPL v3 license. Please contact the authors if you require a more permissive license.

Further Information
OpenRatSLAM is avilable as a library for intergration, eg with OpenCV, without requiring ROS.


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*** Copyright and V.i.S.d.P.: Michael Milford (algorithm); Gordon Wyeth (algorithm); David Ball (code); Scott Heath (code); ***