TOF v/s Stereo SLAM

[gauravshukla914]

Hi. I have a few question regarding performing SLAM algorithm. We have the VOXL flight deck with us.

1 - Can we use Stereo cameras which is integrated in the VOXL flight deck for performing the SLAM?
2-IsTOF sensor a better choice for performing SLAM. And if yes, do we need to replace the stereo cameras with the TOF?
3- What is the difference between SLAM performed by Stereo camera and SLAM performed by TOF sensor?

[Chad Sweet]

1 - Can we use Stereo cameras which is integrated in the VOXL flight deck for performing the SLAM?
Yes! definitely possible. To consume the stereo frames, you'll need to disable VOA in voxl-vision-px4 if that is currently enabled. This repo should create a depth map and publish to ROS: https://github.com/ATLFlight/dfs-ros-example

2-IsTOF sensor a better choice for performing SLAM. And if yes, do we need to replace the stereo cameras with the TOF?
that depends. TOF works better indoors, and stereo works better outdoors. An upcoming software release, potentially 3.1, will support stereo and TOF concurrently. One of the other image sensors will need to be removed though for support, like the 4k high-res.

3- What is the difference between SLAM performed by Stereo camera and SLAM performed by TOF sensor?
Stereo works better outdoors, TOF works better indoors.