Automatic Reconstruction of Multi-Level Indoor Spaces from Point Cloud and Trajectory

Remarkable progress in the development of modeling methods for indoor spaces has been made in recent years with a focus on the reconstruction of complex environments, such as multi-room and multi-level buildings. Existing methods represent indoor structure models as a combination of several sub-spaces, which are constructed by room segmentation or horizontal slicing approach that divide the multi-room or multi-level building environments into several segments. In this study, we propose an automatic reconstruction method of multi-level indoor spaces with unique models, including inter-room and inter-floor connections from point cloud and trajectory. We construct structural points from registered point cloud and extract piece-wise planar segments from the structural points. Then, a three-dimensional space decomposition is conducted and water-tight meshes are generated with energy minimization using graph cut algorithm. The data term of the energy function is expressed as a difference in visibility between each decomposed space and trajectory. The proposed method allows modeling of indoor spaces in complex environments, such as multi-room, room-less, and multi-level buildings. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated for seven indoor space datasets.

Indoor Mapping Guidance Algorithm of Rotary-Wing UAV Including Dead-End Situations

A mapping guidance algorithm of a quadrotor for unknown indoor environments is proposed. A sensor with limited sensing range is assumed to be mounted on the quadrotor to obtain object data points. With obtained data, the quadrotor computes velocity vector and yaw commands to move around the object while maintaining a safe distance. The magnitude of the velocity vector is also controlled to prevent a collision. The distance transform method is applied to establish dead-end situation logic as well as exploration completion logic. When a dead-end situation occurs, the guidance algorithm of the quadrotor is switched to a particular maneuver. The proposed maneuver enables the quadrotor not only to escape from the dead-end situation, but also to find undiscovered area to continue mapping. Various numerical simulations are performed to verify the performance of the proposed mapping guidance algorithm.

NormNet: Point-wise normal estimation network for three-dimensional point cloud data

In this article, a point-wise normal estimation network for three-dimensional point cloud data called NormNet is proposed. We propose the multiscale K-nearest neighbor convolution module for strengthened local feature extraction. With the multiscale K-nearest neighbor convolution module and PointNet-like architecture, we achieved a hybrid of three features: a global feature, a semantic feature from the segmentation network, and a local feature from the multiscale K-nearest neighbor convolution module. Those features, by mutually supporting each other, not only increase the normal estimation performance but also enable the estimation to be robust under severe noise perturbations or point deficiencies. The performance was validated in three different data sets: Synthetic CAD data (ModelNet), RGB-D sensor-based real 3D PCD (S3DIS), and LiDAR sensor-based real 3D PCD that we built and shared.

Detection and Compensation of Degeneracy Cases for IMU-Kinect Integrated Continuous SLAM with Plane Features

In a group of general geometric primitives, plane-based features are widely used for indoor localization because of their robustness against noises. However, a lack of linearly independent planes may lead to a non-trivial estimation. This in return can cause a degenerate state from which all states cannot be estimated. To solve this problem, this paper first proposed a degeneracy detection method. A compensation method that could fix orientations by projecting an inertial measurement unit’s (IMU) information was then explained. Experiments were conducted using an IMU-Kinect v2 integrated sensor system prone to fall into degenerate cases owing to its narrow field-of-view. Results showed that the proposed framework could enhance map accuracy by successful detection and compensation of degenerated orientations.