– A Modular and Multi-Modal Mapping Framework

Integration of multiple sensor modalities and deep learning into Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) systems are areas of significant interest in current research. Multi-modality is a stepping stone towards achieving robustness in challenging environments and interoperability of heterogeneous multi-robot systems with varying sensor setups. With <monospace>maplab 2.0</monospace>, we provide a versatile open-source platform that facilitates developing, testing, and integrating new modules and features into a fully-fledged SLAM system. Through extensive experiments, we show that <monospace>maplab 2.0</monospace>’s accuracy is comparable to the state-of-the-art on the HILTI 2021 benchmark. Additionally, we showcase the flexibility of our system with three use cases: i) large-scale (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>10 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{km}$</tex-math></inline-formula>) multi-robot multi-session (23 missions) mapping, ii) integration of non-visual landmarks, and iii) incorporating a semantic object-based loop closure module into the mapping framework.