PGTI: Pose-Graph Topological Integrity for Map Quality Assessment in SLAM

Shuxiang Xie, Ken Sakurada, Ryoichi Ishikawa, Masaki Onishi, Takeshi Oishi

Abstract: We introduce the pose-graph topological integrity, an approach designed to assess the correctness of pose graphs in simultaneous localization and mapping. Traditional methods assessed map quality according to the optimality criteria based on pose graphs, which often rely on heuristically defined edge information matrices. These methods cannot capture the inconsistencies between the constructed map and the actual environment. In contrast, the proposed approach utilizes heat kernel signatures to directly quantify topological inconsistencies between the pose graph and support graph derived from free-space constraints. This enables a multi-scale and per-vertex evaluation of topological integrity. The experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed metric can detect topological errors and distinguish between serious ones and harmless ones.

External IDs:dblp:journals/robotics/XieSIOO25