Augmenting SLAM with deep learning

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the computational problem of constructing or updating a map of an unknown environment while simultaneously keeping track of a robot's location within it. SLAM is being gradually developed towards Spatial AI, the common sense spatial reasoning that will enable robots and other artificial devices to operate in general ways in their environments. This will enable robots to not just localize and build geometric maps, but actually interact intelligently with scenes and objects. A key technology that is helping this progress is deep learning, which has enabled many recent breakthroughs in computer vision and other areas of AI. In the context of Spatial AI, deep learning has most obviously had a big impact on bringing semantic meaning to geometric maps of the world.