Evaluating the Advantages of Remote SLAM on an Edge Cloud

Abstract

The Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) method is becoming more and more established for the localization of mobile robots in indoor environments. Due to the high complexity of SLAM, high computing resources are necessary, which leads to a shorter runtime. By using edge computing and higher bandwidths of new wireless technologies, the computing can be outsourced. In this work, the SLAM process is offloaded from a mobile robot to an edge cloud and the impact of more computing power is investigated. We show that outsourcing has performance advantages in terms of the update rate of the map generation as well as the localization.