Evaluation of a Parallel Architecture and Algorithm for Mapping and Localization

The Beowulf cluster approach to parallel computation offers a potentially cheap and robust source of computational power for high complexity algorithms in robotics. The challenge is to integrate this approach with the mobility and time critical response constraints of many robotic algorithms. The key contributions of this paper are: (1) introduction of a computational architecture for integrating a cluster into the control architecture of one or more robots, (2) a cluster implementation of Thrun et al's Concurrent Localization and Mapping (CML) algorithm, and (3) presentation of results to illustrate the performance of the implemented CML algorithm and validate the architectural approach.