Plug-and-Play SLAM: A Unified SLAM Architecture for Modularity and Ease of Use

Abstract: Nowadays, SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) is considered by the Robotics community to be a mature field. Currently, there are many open-source systems that are able to deliver fast and accurate estimation in typical real-world scenarios. Still, all these systems often provide an ad-hoc implementation that entailed to predefined sensor configurations. In this work, we tackle this issue, proposing a novel SLAM architecture specifically designed to address heterogeneous sensors' configuration and to standardize SLAM solutions. Thanks to its modularity and to specific design patterns, the presented architecture is easy to extend, enhancing code reuse and efficiency. Finally, adopting our solution, we conducted comparative experiments for a variety of sensor configurations, showing competitive results that confirm state-of-the-art performance.