2015 4th International Conference on Computer Science and Network Technology (ICCSNT 2015)
A RGBD SLAM Algorithm Combining ORB with
PROSAC for Indoor Mobile Robot
Guan-xi XIN, Xu-tang ZHANG, Xi Wang and Jin Song
School of Mechatronics Engineering
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
E-mail: xinguanxi1992@hotmail.com
Abstract—In order to enhance the instantaneity of SLAM for
indoor mobile robot, a RGBD SLAM method based on Kinect
was proposed. In the method, oriented FAST and rotated BRIE-
F(ORB) algorithm was combined with progressive sample
consensus(PROSAC) algorithm to execute feature extracting and
matching. More specifically, ORB algorithm which has better
property than many other feature descriptors was used for
extracting feature. At the same time, ICP algorithm was adopted
for coarse registration of the point clouds, and PROSAC
algorithm which is superior than RANSAC in outlier removal
was employed to eliminate incorrect matching. To make the
result more accurate, pose-graph optimization was achieved
based on g2o framework. In the end, a 3D volumetric map which
can be directly used to the navigation of robots was created.
Keywords—SLAM; KINECT; RGB-D SLAM; ORB; PROSAC
I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile robot is a complexly integrated system including
computer technology, sensor technology, information
processing, electronic engineering, automation, control
engineering, artificial intelligence and so on. At the same time,
it is one of the most active and promising fields at present.
There are many research directions in the field of mobile robot
in which autonomous navigation is one of the most challenging
abilities. Autonomous navigation problem of mobile robot can
be divided into three parts: localization, mapping and path
planning[1]. After years of research, scholars have realized
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping(SLAM) is the crux to
realize autonomous navigation of mobile robot in the true
sense[2].
With the development of SLAM algorithm, there are
mainly three kinds of sensors to be used in SLAM domain.
They are range lasers, binocular and monocular. Many scholars
have done a lot of research about SLAM based on the three
sensors. However, they all have their own shortcomings. Laser
sensors can obtain detailed information of the surrounding
environment, but it has the following problems: not useful in
highly chaotic environments or for object identification; costly,
heavy, making their use difficult for aerial robotics or
humanoid robots[3]. With regard to monocular or binocular,
they both obtain depth information at a very heavy cost, by
means of structure from motion or stereo matching, consuming
a lot of time. In recent years, one of the most recent
developments in sensing technology has led to important
978-1-4673-8173-4/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
development in robot, and a typical example is Kinect which
has been categorised under RGBD cameras.[4] Kinect has a
prominent advantage that it can obtain depth image and color
image simultaneously which can lower data association and
computation complexity. In addition, it has an acceptable price.
Based on the Kinect sensor, RGBD SLAM was coined by P.
Henry in 2010.[5]
As for vision based SLAM, in order to build a 3D map of
the surrounding environment, the information of environment
must be extracted from images. Therefore, it’s very important
to select suitable feature descriptors. Scale Invariant Feature
Transform (SIFT) or Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF)
which is a variant of SIFT is commonly regarded as feature
descriptors in visual SLAM[6][7]. However, there is no doubt
that whatever SIFT or SURF. They can’t meet the needs of the
instantaneity well which is an important parameter for SLAM.
Aiming at the instantaneity problem of SLAM, this paper
proposed a RGBD SLAM algorithm combining ORB[8] with
PROSAC algorithm [9] based on Kinect. ORB algorithm was
used to extract feature, and PROSAC algorithm which is
superior than RANSAC in outlier removal was employed to
eliminate incorrect matching. To make the result more accurate,
pose-graph optimization was achieved based on g2o
framework[10]. In the end, a 3D volumetric map which can be
directly used to the navigation of robots was created .
II. THE DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED METHOD
A. System Framework
In this section, the system framework of proposed method
is shown in Fig.1. Like most methods of RGB-D SLAM, the
proposed method is a graph-based SLAM. There are five
primary modules in the method, including feature detection,
transformation estimation, ICP algorithm, graph optimization
and map representation. The main process is as follows: Firstly,
depth images and RGB images were obtained by Kinect sensor.
Then, feature detection was executed using ORB algorithm, at
the same time, The PROSAC algorithm is utilized to get more
accurate inlier matching points in motion transformation
estimation. Dense point clouds were registered with the
addition of the depth information. To obtain globally optimal
poses of the robot and the map of the environment, a graph-
based optimization method by g2o frame was applied to the
system.Thus, the trajectory of the robot can be obtained. In the
71 Harbin, China
meantime, a colored 3D voxel map of the environment can be Then, BRIEF operator was carried out in the section of
generated. feature description. BRIEF descriptor has the advantages of
simple description, small storage space and fast speed.
kinect However, BRIEF has defect that it does not have rotation
invariance, which rBRIEF operator in ORB descriptor can
Depth RGB solve. To give orientation information to BRIEF, point sets
images images need to be modified into a matrix like the equation (4)

Transformation
Feature matching(ORB)  x , , xn 
estimation(PROSAC)
S = 1 (4)

 y1 , , yn 
Graph Robot Point
optimization(g2o) trajectory clouds Corresponding rotation matrix R𝜭𝜭 can be calculated by the
direction angle 𝜭𝜭 of FAST. Thus the test point sets including
orientation property can be calculated S𝜭𝜭= R𝜭𝜭S. The new
3D volumetric descriptor can be represented as follows:
Pose graph
map

Fig. 1. System framework g n ( p, q ) f n ( P) ( xi , yi ) ∈ Sθ

= (5)

B. ORB Algorithm for Feature Detection

It’s well known that ORB which is a combination of FAST
detector [11] and BRIEF descriptor[12] is much faster than
SIFT and SURF. ORB is a kind of locally invariant feature
descriptor which possesses invariance of translation, rotation
and scaling for photos and images. Fast detector does not
produce multi-scale features. However, the ORB applies a
scale pyramid of the image, and generates FAST features at
every level of the pyramid. FAST operator was applied in the
section of feature point detection, and ORB has implemented
some improvement aiming at the problem that FAST operator
does not have the property of orientation. On account of the
problem that FAST detector doesn’t provide the method of
describing the nature of the angular point and has a non-
ignorable response of edge, oFAST detector employed Harris
corner detector in the process of sorting of FAST detector. In
comparison with FAST detector, the major improvement of
oFAST is the addition of orientation property which makes
feature description operator possess rotation invariance.
The orientation is calculated based on the intensity centroid.
Firstly, a moment of image region was defined as follows:
m pq = ∑ x p yq I ( x, y )
x, y
The center of mass of the image can be found by the
moment
m10 m01
C =( , )
m00 m00
Thus, a vector can be obtained, and the direction of the
vector can represent the main orientation of FAST
θ = a tan 2( m01 , m10 )
The result of ORB matching can be shown in Fig.2.
Fig. 2. The ORB features of the two images
C. PROSAC Algorithm for Transformation Estimation
Chances are that wrong matchings which are also termed
outliers may appear when it comes to feature matching.
Although these outliers are not worth mentioning compared to
the whole feature points, they will give rise to a lot of mistakes
in the global motion estimation. So some measures which can
distinguish inliers from outliers and eliminate outliers must be
taken to choose the correct points in parameter estimation.
(1)
As a general rule, there are a majority of valid data and a
little invalid data in the dataset. Least square method or similar
methods can be applied to determine the model parameter and
error. However, least square method can’t be used when there
are a great number of invalid data. So PROSAC algorithm
which is a variant of RANSAC is adopted to eliminate the error
matching. The PROSAC algorithm eliminates outliers by
repeated iterative operation and employs least square method to
(2) estimate parameter matrix .
PROSAC algorithm is superior to RANSAC algorithm in
the matter of robustness and computational efficiency.
RANSAC algorithm randomly draws samples without
considering the differences between samples. In contrast to
(3) RANSAC, PROSAC algorithm sorts the correlation between

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sampling points and the model in the first place, then iterates 1 N 2

from the correlation of sampling points, finally the optimal E ( R, t )

=
N
∑ RPr + t − Pl (6)
solution can be obtained by continuous hypothesis and i =1

validation. The flow chart of PROSAC algorithm is shown in

Fig.3 , and the result of outlier removal is shown in Fig.4. To calculate rotation and translation matrix R and t which
make the equation minimal, quaternion algorithm is applied
instead of SVD method which may generate singular matrix.
Start
E. Graph Optimization
Iterative setting In general , a graph is made up of nodes and edges. A node
of related item is on behalf of the pose of robot , and a edge represents the
pose transformation of two adjacent moment. Once a graph is
built completely, the pose of robot should be adjusted to meet
Y the boundary constraints. A graph-based SLAM system can be
Iterations> Maximum iterations divided into two modules: front-end and back-end. In the front-
N end module, geometric constraints need to be extracted from
Sorting and the sensor data, and the problem of data association needs to be
no solution choose high- Iterations+1 solved. Finally , nodes and edges of the graph structure should
quality data be constructed. In the back-end module, the assignment is to
look for the state vector which can make likelihood function of
geometric constraints maximum. A classical graph-based
model parameters SLAM is shown as Fig.5
and inliers of the
calculations Optimized poses
Sensor
data
The number of N
inliers>pre-set threshold
Pose and
Y Front-end constraints Back-end
Return parameters (graph construction) (optimization)
Of inliers and
model
Fig. 5. A graph-based SLAM system

To solve the problem of pose graph optimization, we make

start
use of g2o framework like Fig.6. The solution of SLAM can be
regarded as the minimum value of the function as follows:
Fig. 3. PROSAC algorithm

∑
T
=F ( x) e( xi , x j , zij ) Ωij e( xi , x j , zij ) (7)
<i , j >∈C

x* = arg min x F ( x) (8)

x* is the result of final optimization, x=(x1T, x2T, …, xnT) is

a vector of camera poses. Zij and Ωij indicate the mean and the
information matrix of a constraint with respect to the camera
poses xi and xj. e(xi,xj,zij) is a vector error function which
Fig. 4. Matching results with PROSAC
measures how well the camera poses xi and xj satisfies the
constraint zij. If the poses xi and xj perfectly satisfies the
D. ICP Algorithm constraint zij ,the error is zero[13].
The Iterative Closest Point (lCP) algorithm is often used to
align two groups of point clouds. Assuming that there are two
groups of point clouds named Pr and Pl, then we can obtain the
rigid transformation of the two groups of point clouds by
calculating the minimum of the equation as follows:

73

e45 x5
x4
x1 e42 e34
e12
e23 x3
x2
Fig. 6. Graph structure of g2o
F. Map Representation
So far, a globally consistent trajectory of robot has been
obtained. Then we can project all point measurements in a
global 3D coordinate system by means of the trajetory, thus a
point cloud map of the environment can be generated. However,
the map is redundant and demands large calculational and
memory sources.
To solve the problem, the OctoMap[14] is introduced to the
system to indicate the 3D colored map of the environment. 3D
map of lab is shown as Fig. 7
Fig. 7. 3D colored map of the lab.
III. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed a RGB-D SLAM algorithm combining
ORB with PROSAC. It was applied to an indoor environment
for mobile robot. ORB algorithm which has better property
than many other feature descriptors was used for extracting
feature. At the same time, ICP algorithm was adopted for
coarse registration of the point clouds, and PROSAC algorithm
which is superior than RANSAC in outlier removal was
employed to eliminate incorrect matching. To make the result
more accurate, Pose-graph optimization was achieved based on
g2o framework. Finally, a 3D volumetric map was created.
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