Scaling Up Edge-Assisted Real-Time Collaborative Visual SLAM Applications

Abstract

The edge-based multi-agent visual SLAM is crucial for emerging mobile applications like search-and-rescue, inventory automation, and industrial inspection. It uses a central node to manage the global map and schedule tasks for agents. However, as the number of agents increases, the system faces scalability challenges due to operational overhead, such as data redundancy, bandwidth consumption, and localization errors. In this paper, we introduce, a framework designed to enhance the scalability of collaborative visual SLAM service in edge offloading settings. consists of three system modules: a change log-based server-client synchronization mechanism, a priority-aware task scheduler, and a lean global map representation. These modules work together to address the challenges of data explosion problems. is open-source and compatible with the robotic operating system (ROS). Existing visual SLAM applications could incorporate through SwarmAPI, a set of well-packaged APIs, to compose SwarmMap’s function modules to enhance their performance and capacity in multi-agent scenarios. Comprehensive evaluations and a three-month case study at one of the world’s largest oilfields demonstrate that can serve 2 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times$</tex-math> </inline-formula> more agents ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 20 agents) than the state-of-the-arts with the same resource overhead, meanwhile maintaining an average trajectory error of 38 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$cm$</tex-math> </inline-formula> , outperforming existing works by <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 55%.