Standalone changes

• RealSense2:
  • D400 cameras: IR Depth mode (with IR emitter disabled) is now used by default instead of RGB Depth. The IR camera has a larger field-of-view, has a global shutter and is perfectly synchronized with depth image, so visual odometry is more accurate.
  • The included realsense2 library in windows binaries has been patched so that we can use T265 alone like a stereo camera.
• GUI: Added multi-session localization view, related to this new 2022 paper Multi-Session Visual SLAM for Illumination Invariant Re-Localization in Indoor Environments
• Updated with Qt6 support
• Updated with VTK 9 support
• Added OAK-D Lite support

Library changes

• RTAB-Map library now uses CMake targets to make it easier to include in another cmake project.

  find_package(RTABMap REQUIRED)
  target_link_libraries(MyApp rtabmap::core)

• Updated compilation instructions on Windows, now using officially vcpkg for main dependencies.
• Added option to set priors on markers (automatically transform map in world coordinates)
• [ROS] Multi-camera visual odometry and localization support (build with OpenGV dependency).
• [ROS] On Noetic and ROS2, the rtabmap_ros package has been split into sub packages (you can now get all message definitions without installing everything, only ros-$ROS_DISTRO-rtabmap-msgs). See migration guide here. For example:

  <!-- Before: -->
  <node pkg="rtabmap_ros" type="rtabmap" name="rtabmap"/>
  <node pkg="rtabmap_ros" type="rgbd_odometry" name="rgbd_odometry"/>
  <!-- Now: -->
  <node pkg="rtabmap_slam" type="rtabmap" name="rtabmap"/>
  <node pkg="rtabmap_odom" type="rgbd_odometry" name="rgbd_odometry"/>

• [Android] Added recovery feature, android 30 support, fixed various bugs
• [iOS] Improved significantly rendering performance on latest iPhones
• [Docker] Added 22.04 / Jammy image
• Improved stability and many bug fixes as seen below.

Full Changelog: 0.20.16...0.21.0

Pull requests

• Add Boost serialization package for libpointmatcher case by @MarvinStuede in #810
• List dependencies only once by @Timple in #812
• fix missing curl install in focal dockerfile by @benknight135 in #816
• Allow negative disparity in dialog for stereo matchers by @benknight135 in #817
• Marker priors by @matlabbe in #859
• fixing missing DISABLE_VTK on recent PCL versions by @matlabbe in #871
• Added stereo multi-camera support by @matlabbe in #884
• Use imported target for res_tool during cross compilation. by @windelbouwman in #865
• implement multi camera marker detection #898 by @matlabbe in #899
• Pnp multicam refactoring by @matlabbe in #902
• OpenCV 4.7 moved aruco, and has breaking changes by @cnSchwarzer in #955
• fix bigobj under MSVC, fix yaml-cpp link. by @cnSchwarzer in #957
• Refactoring RTABMapConfig.cmake with targets by @matlabbe in #904
• Qt6 compatibility by @matlabbe in #968

New Contributors

• @MarvinStuede made their first contribution in #810
• @Timple made their first contribution in #812
• @benknight135 made their first contribution in #816
• @windelbouwman made their first contribution in #865
• @cnSchwarzer made their first contribution in #955

Dependencies included in the Windows binaries:

• Core: OpenCV 4.7.0 with xfeatures2d and nonfree modules (GPU options enabled on CUDA 11.7 release), PCL 1.13.0 with VTK 9.2.0, Qt 6.4.3.
• Drivers:
  • OpenNI and OpenNI2 (Kinect for XBOX 360, Xtion Live Pro, Orbbec Astra),
  • Freenect2 (UsbDk v1.00-22 should be installed, cuda pipeline available in cuda11.7 release),
  • Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0 (Kinect for XBOX ONE),
  • Kinect For Azure,
  • RealSense (ZR300, R200)(check older releases),
  • RealSense2 2.53.1 (T265, D415, D435, D435i, L515, D400 Series visual presets can be used),
  • Tara,
  • Mynt Eye S SDK(check older releases),
  • ZED SDK 3.8 (enabled on cuda11.7 release),
  • DepthAI (OAK-D, OAK-D Lite)
• Optimizers: TORO, g2o, GTSAM, Ceres
• ICP: libpointmatcher, CCCoreLib
• Reconstruction: OctoMap
• DNN: SuperPoint support with libtorch (enabled on cuda11.7 release)

Other

• Looking for ICP configuration file for L515 and Kinect Azure, see release 0.20.8.
• Windows High CPU Usage: this can be related to OpenMP, try setting environment variable OMP_WAIT_POLICY to passive.
• SuperPoint weights can be downloaded in assets below for convenience (tested with CUDA release).
• See Installation page for additional installation instructions depending on your platform and the camera you are using (e.g., drivers).

Full Changelog: 0.20.16...0.21.0