A Review on Decentralized Visual SLAM for Autonomous Mobile Robots

This review explores the intersection of visual sensing and decentralized Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), motivating the development of decentralized visual SLAM. To the best of our knowledge, exclusive reviews of decentralized SLAM frameworks are limited. We first discuss the motivations and technical challenges, such as computational and communication scalability, that these systems encounter. We then outline the mathematical formulation of the collaborative SLAM problem and review recent end-to-end decentralized visual SLAM systems to highlight the latest advancements. After that, we break down a typical decentralized visual SLAM pipeline into key modules, briefly summarizing the progress in each with greater focus on decentralized elements. Following, we discuss the common evaluation techniques and public datasets for the systematic assessment of such systems. Last but not least, we highlight open problems and potential research directions to further advance this field.