{"title":"CornerVINS: Accurate Localization and Layout Mapping for Structural Environments Leveraging Hierarchical Geometric Representations","authors":"Yidi Zhang;Fulin Tang;Yihong Wu","doi":"10.1109/TRO.2025.3567532","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A compact and consistent map of surroundings is critical for intelligent robots to understand their situations and realize robust navigation. Most existing techniques rely on infinite planes, which are sensitive to pose drift and may lead to confusing maps. Toward high-level perception in indoor environments, we propose CornerVINS, an innovative RGB-D inertial localization and layout mapping method leveraging hierarchical geometric features, i.e., points, planes, and box corners. Specifically, points are enhanced by fusing depth information, and planes are modeled as bounded patches using convex hulls to increase their discriminability. More importantly, box corners, lying at the intersection of three orthogonal planes, are parameterized with a 6-D vector and integrated into the extended Kalman filter for the first time. We introduce a hierarchical mechanism to effectively extract and associate planes and corners, which are considered as layout components of scenes and serve as long-term landmarks to correct camera poses. Extensive experiments prove that the proposed box corners bring significant improvements, enabling accurate localization and consistent layout mapping at low computational cost. Overall, the proposed CornerVINS outperforms state-of-the-art systems in both accuracy and efficiency.","PeriodicalId":50388,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","volume":"41 ","pages":"3500-3517"},"PeriodicalIF":9.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE Transactions on Robotics","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10989541/","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ROBOTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A compact and consistent map of surroundings is critical for intelligent robots to understand their situations and realize robust navigation. Most existing techniques rely on infinite planes, which are sensitive to pose drift and may lead to confusing maps. Toward high-level perception in indoor environments, we propose CornerVINS, an innovative RGB-D inertial localization and layout mapping method leveraging hierarchical geometric features, i.e., points, planes, and box corners. Specifically, points are enhanced by fusing depth information, and planes are modeled as bounded patches using convex hulls to increase their discriminability. More importantly, box corners, lying at the intersection of three orthogonal planes, are parameterized with a 6-D vector and integrated into the extended Kalman filter for the first time. We introduce a hierarchical mechanism to effectively extract and associate planes and corners, which are considered as layout components of scenes and serve as long-term landmarks to correct camera poses. Extensive experiments prove that the proposed box corners bring significant improvements, enabling accurate localization and consistent layout mapping at low computational cost. Overall, the proposed CornerVINS outperforms state-of-the-art systems in both accuracy and efficiency.
期刊介绍:
The IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) is dedicated to publishing fundamental papers covering all facets of robotics, drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from computer science, control systems, electrical engineering, mathematics, mechanical engineering, and beyond. From industrial applications to service and personal assistants, surgical operations to space, underwater, and remote exploration, robots and intelligent machines play pivotal roles across various domains, including entertainment, safety, search and rescue, military applications, agriculture, and intelligent vehicles.
Special emphasis is placed on intelligent machines and systems designed for unstructured environments, where a significant portion of the environment remains unknown and beyond direct sensing or control.