The Revisiting Problem in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: A Survey on Visual Loop Closure Detection

Where am I? This is one of the most critical questions that any intelligent system should answer to decide whether it navigates a previously visited area. problem has long been acknowledged for its challenging nature in simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), wherein robot needs correctly associate incoming sensory data database allowing consistent map generation. The significant advances computer vision achieved over last 20 years, increased computational power, growing demand long-term exploration contributed efficiently performing such complex task with inexpensive perception sensors. In this article, visual loop closure detection, which formulates solution based solely on appearance input data, surveyed. We start by briefly introducing place recognition SLAM concepts robotics. Then, we describe detection system’s structure, covering an extensive collection topics, including feature extraction, environment representation, decision-making step, evaluation process. conclude discussing open new research challenges, particularly concerning robustness dynamic environments, complexity, scalability operations. article aims serve as tutorial position paper newcomers detection.