WHAT IS SLAM?
SIMULTANEOUS LOCALIZATION AND MAPPING
In an easy word, we can say that slam is a type of location system, like G.P.S. (GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM). slam is used for locating any kind of device. this technology is used in self-driven cars robots and modern days smart gadgets.
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| SIMULTANEOUS LOCALIZATION AND MAPPING | SLAM | FULL DETAILS |
WE ALREADY HAVE G.P.S. THEN WHY WE NEED SLAM?
we all know necessity is the mother of invention. GPS has many limitations like
. it cannot locate in indoor conditions
. it is precise up a certain limit like 5meters it cannot be as precise to locate elements of a house like a table chair bed etc.
. it needs much time to locate any staff.in In self-driven cars we do not have such times.
. GPS is a satellite-based location system it can not locate nearby elements like cars trees precisely
.also it can not locate moving elements.
--------for all these reasons we need a new type of location system which is slam.
it resolves all the limitations of GPS and also provides some extra features.it is not a Satelite based system. actually it is a local mapping system. devices that use slam create a map of it's working space in the first run and work according to that map. the map is stored in its memory.
HOW SLAM WORK?
working principle of slam is very easy, just imagine you are in a dark room you don't know about the room,means you don't know where are the tables chairs door or bed, now how will you move in that room. simple you will move in any fixed direction and use your hand to know if there are any obstacles..doing this job repeatedly in all direction you will get a decent idea about the room. now you will move in a direction then check for obstacles and repeat the same. slam works exactly the same way.
it has infrared sensors proximity sensors using which it knows about the nearest obstacles and determine the way. in the first go, it creates a map of it's working place.
for example, if we consider a house cleaner robot, for the first time it creates a map of the house like where is the table where is the door and other things and after that, it works according to that map. it also updates the map dynamically.
now there is another question of how they know in which direction it is moving or the corresponding position of the elements, means is the bed in the north side of the table or on the south side ? and in which direction it is moving towards the table or towards the bed? This is also simple think you are standing middle of a tree and a house if you move towards the house then the tree will look smaller in your view and the house will become bigger and vice varsa. slam also uses this simple method with an inbuilt compass and it also detects the size of any element using infrared sensor.
there are some more sensors like gyroscope sensors to measure the rotation angel, accelerometer to determine the speed an some more to operate in a perfect manner.
USES OF SLAM:-
there are a lot of uses of slam technology in modern-day technology from cars to robots cleaners there are many uses.1 self-driving car:- self-driving cars use GPS to determine the way but it uses slam technology to drive through the road, determine the location of other cars, turnings, barriers. dynamic mapping is in this technic
2. robots:- robots which work inside our house can not be monitored by GPS system they use slam and create a map of the house or office and work according to that
3. automatic room cleaner:- these are also one kind of robot and work in the same way using slam technic
VISUAL SLAM TECHNOLOGY:-
Visual SLAM is still in its infancy, commercially speaking. While it has enormous potential in a wide range of settings, it’s still an emerging technology. With that said, it is likely to be an important part of augmented reality (AR) applications. Accurately projecting virtual images onto the physical world requires precise mapping of the physical environment, and only visual SLAM technology is capable of providing this level of accuracy.
Visual SLAM systems are also used in a wide variety of field robots. For example, rovers and landers for exploring Mars use visual SLAM systems to navigate autonomously. Field robots in agriculture, as well as drones, can use the same technology to independently travel around crop fields. Autonomous vehicles could potentially use visual SLAM systems for mapping and understanding the world around them.
One major potential opportunity for visual SLAM systems is to replace GPS tracking and navigation in certain applications. GPS systems aren’t useful indoors, or in big cities where the view of the sky is obstructed, and they’re only accurate within a few meters. Visual SLAM systems solve each of these problems as they’re not dependent on satellite information and they’re taking accurate measurements of the physical world around them.
Visual SLAM technology has many potential applications and demand for this technology will likely increase as it helps augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and other products become more commercially viable.
The ability to sense the location of a camera, as well as the environment around it, without knowing either data points beforehand is incredibly difficult. Visual SLAM systems are proving to be effective at tackling this challenge, however, and are emerging as one of the most sophisticated embedded vision technologies available
FUTURE OF SLAM TECHNOLOGY:-
slam is the technology that actually creates a revolution in robotics automation. there are so many scopes in modern technology. slam system will be developed day by and we can hope that we will get complete automatic robots cars and many other things which will actually help us to improve our lifestyles.
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