ElasticFusion: Real-time dense SLAM and light source estimation

We present a novel approach to real-time dense visual simultaneous localisation and mapping. Our system is capable of capturing comprehensive dense globally consistent surfel-based maps of room scale environments and beyond explored using an RGB-D camera in an incremental online fashion, without pose graph optimization or any post-processing steps. This is accomplished by using dense frame-to-model camera tracking and windowed surfel-based fusion coupled with frequent model refinement through non-rigid surface deformations. Our approach applies local model-to-model surface loop closure optimizations as often as possible to stay close to the mode of the map distribution, while utilizing global loop closure to…