Real-Time Multi Robot Map Combination

Posted by Jacobmo on
URL: http://official-rtab-map-forum.206.s1.nabble.com/Real-Time-Multi-Robot-Map-Combination-tp5992.html

I am working with multiple robots connected to a ground station computer. Each robot is running their own version of RTAB-Map and building their own map. I am planning on combining those maps into a single map while they are still flying. I think I have found a way to do most of it, but before I dive in too deep, I wanted to know if there is a better way to do what I want

I want to pull the keyframe images and map information from each map by either subscribing to the map graph and keyframe image topics or by calling the get_map_data service from the main computer.

Then using bag of words find new matches between the two robots and then pass those to the graph and re-optimize.
Then rebuild the map with the new combined graph.

I have found some useful functions in your code that do a lot of this. I am just wondering if you have a way that makes it easy to do this without having to replicate a lot of the functionality that already exists in RTAB map.

It doesn't have to be entirely real time and it doesn't have to send the combined maps back to the agents. But I would like to be able to view a combined map on the base station computer that updates every 30 seconds or something like that.

If possible, I would prefer to view the combined map in RVIZ.
Do you have any advice?