Switch-SLAM: Switching-Based LiDAR-Inertial-Visual SLAM for Degenerate Environments

This letter presents Switch-SLAM, switching-based LiDAR-inertial-visual SLAM for degenerate environments, designed to tackle the challenges in degenerate environments for LiDAR and visual SLAM. Switch-SLAM achieves high robustness and accuracy by utilizing a switching structure that transitions from LiDAR to visual odometry when degeneration of LiDAR odometry is detected. To efficiently detect degeneration, Switch-SLAM incorporates a non-heuristic degeneracy detection method that does not require heuristic tuning and demonstrates generalizability across various environments. Switch-SLAM is evaluated on diverse datasets containing both LiDAR and visual odometry degeneracy scenarios. The experimental results highlight the accurate and robust localization by the proposed method in multiple challenging environments with either LiDAR or visual SLAM degeneracy.