Visual-LiDAR Odometry and Mapping with Monocular Scale Correction and Motion Compensation

This paper presents a novel visual-LiDAR odometry and mapping method with low-drift characteristics. The proposed method is based on two popular approaches, ORB-SLAM and A-LOAM, with monocular scale correction and visual-assisted LiDAR motion compensation modifications. The scale corrector calculates the proportion between the depth of image keypoints recovered by triangulation and that provided by LiDAR, using an outlier rejection process for accuracy improvement. Concerning LiDAR motion compensation, the visual odometry approach gives the initial guesses of LiDAR motions for better performance. This methodology is not only applicable to high-resolution LiDAR but can also adapt to low-resolution LiDAR. To evaluate the proposed SLAM system's robustness and accuracy, we conducted experiments on the KITTI Odometry and S3E datasets. Experimental results illustrate that our method significantly outperforms standalone ORB-SLAM2 and A-LOAM. Furthermore, regarding the accuracy of visual odometry with scale correction, our method performs similarly to the stereo-mode ORB-SLAM2.

Virtual Model Control for Wheel-legged Robotic Systems with Prescribed Transient Performance

This work proposes a posture adjustment strategy for wheel-legged mechanisms via virtual model control with prescribed transient performance. A simple model of a rigid block subjected to a 6-dimensional force at the center of gravity (CoG) is introduced to be the virtual model of the wheel-legged control system. The force tracking of the wheel-legs is realized with prescribed transient performance based on the funnel control strategy. To improve the robustness of the scheme, an event-triggering condition is designed for on-line segment of the funnel function, such that the force tracking error evolves inside the performance funnel with proved convergence. The absence of Zeno behavior for the event-based mechanism is also guaranteed. With the force references of the wheel-legs are planned for the vector sum tracks the 6-dimensional force from the virtual model, the posture adjustment is achieved on uneven roads by the force tracking of wheel-legs. Experimental results are presented to validate the stability and effectiveness of the proposed method.