Towards Efficient Occupancy Mapping via Gaussian Process Latent Field Shaping

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Gentil, Cedric Le, Pradalier, Cedric, Barfoot, Timothy D.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Gentil, Cedric Le
Pradalier, Cedric
Barfoot, Timothy D.
author_facet Gentil, Cedric Le
Pradalier, Cedric
Barfoot, Timothy D.
contents Occupancy mapping has been a key enabler of mobile robotics. Originally based on a discrete grid representation, occupancy mapping has evolved towards continuous representations that can predict the occupancy status at any location and account for occupancy correlations between neighbouring areas. Gaussian Process (GP) approaches treat this task as a binary classification problem using both observations of occupied and free space. Conceptually, a GP latent field is passed through a logistic function to obtain the output class without actually manipulating the GP latent field. In this work, we propose to act directly on the latent function to efficiently integrate free space information as a prior based on the shape of the sensor's field-of-view. A major difference with existing methods is the change in the classification problem, as we distinguish between free and unknown space. The `occupied' area is the infinitesimally thin location where the class transitions from free to unknown. We demonstrate in simulated environments that our approach is sound and leads to competitive reconstruction accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_13640
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Efficient Occupancy Mapping via Gaussian Process Latent Field Shaping
Gentil, Cedric Le
Pradalier, Cedric
Barfoot, Timothy D.
Robotics
Occupancy mapping has been a key enabler of mobile robotics. Originally based on a discrete grid representation, occupancy mapping has evolved towards continuous representations that can predict the occupancy status at any location and account for occupancy correlations between neighbouring areas. Gaussian Process (GP) approaches treat this task as a binary classification problem using both observations of occupied and free space. Conceptually, a GP latent field is passed through a logistic function to obtain the output class without actually manipulating the GP latent field. In this work, we propose to act directly on the latent function to efficiently integrate free space information as a prior based on the shape of the sensor's field-of-view. A major difference with existing methods is the change in the classification problem, as we distinguish between free and unknown space. The `occupied' area is the infinitesimally thin location where the class transitions from free to unknown. We demonstrate in simulated environments that our approach is sound and leads to competitive reconstruction accuracy.
title Towards Efficient Occupancy Mapping via Gaussian Process Latent Field Shaping
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13640