Feature points selection with flocks of features constraint for visual simultaneous localization and mapping

Simultaneous localization and mapping is a crucial problem for mobile robots, which estimates the surrounding environment (the map) and, at the same time, computes the robot location in it. Most researchers working on simultaneous localization and mapping focus on localization accuracy. In visual simultaneous localization and mapping, localization is to calculate the robot's position relative to the landmarks, which corresponds to the feature points in images. Therefore, feature points are of importance to localization accuracy and should be selected carefully. This article proposes a feature point selection method to improve the localization accuracy. First, theoretical and numerical analyses are conducted to demonstrate the importance of distribution of feature points. Then, an algorithm using flocks of features is proposed to select feature points. Experimental results show that the proposed flocks of features selector implemented in visual simultaneous localization and mapping enhances the accuracy of both localization and mapping, verifying the necessity of feature point selection.