# Swarm-SLAM : Sparse Decentralized Collaborative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Framework for Multi-Robot Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06230 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06230/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jan 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [KITTI-360: A Novel Dataset and Benchmarks for Urban Scene Understanding in 2D and 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13410/) (2021)
- [Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05830/) (2016)
- [TEASER: Fast and Certifiable Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07715/) (2020)
- [Robot Operating System 2: Design, Architecture, and Uses In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07752/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Visual Geo-localization for Large-Scale Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02287/) (2022)
- [Graduated Non-Convexity for Robust Spatial Perception: From Non-Minimal Solvers to Global Outlier Rejection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08605/) (2019)
- [Kimera-Multi: Robust, Distributed, Dense Metric-Semantic SLAM for Multi-Robot Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14386/) (2021)
- [DOOR-SLAM: Distributed, Online, and Outlier Resilient SLAM for Robotic Teams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12198/) (2019)
- [M2DGR: A Multi-sensor and Multi-scenario SLAM Dataset for Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13659/) (2021)
- [Modeling Perceptual Aliasing in SLAM via Discrete-Continuous Graphical Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11692/) (2018)
- [Data-Efficient Decentralized Visual SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.05772/) (2017)
- [Distributed Certifiably Correct Pose-Graph Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.03721/) (2019)
- [Towards Collaborative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: a Survey of the Current Research Landscape](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08325/) (2021)
- [LAMP 2.0: A Robust Multi-Robot SLAM System for Operation in Challenging Large-Scale Underground Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13135/) (2022)
- [maplab 2.0 -- A Modular and Multi-Modal Mapping Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00654/) (2022)
- [COVINS: Visual-Inertial SLAM for Centralized Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05756/) (2021)
- [Distributed Mapping with Privacy and Communication Constraints: Lightweight Algorithms and Object-based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03435/) (2017)
- [S3E: A Multi-Robot Multimodal Dataset for Collaborative SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13723/) (2022)
- [A Robot Web for Distributed Many-Device Localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03314/) (2022)
- [Performance Guarantees for Spectral Initialization in Rotation Averaging and Pose-Graph SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03773/) (2022)
- [Geometry-based Graph Pruning for Lifelong SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01286/) (2021)
- [Asynchronous and Parallel Distributed Pose Graph Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03281/) (2020)
- [Self-Supervised Domain Calibration and Uncertainty Estimation for Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04446/) (2022)
- [Loop Closure Prioritization for Efficient and Scalable Multi-Robot SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12402/) (2022)
- [A Resource-Aware Approach to Collaborative Loop Closure Detection with Provable Performance Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04904/) (2019)
- [Spectral Measurement Sparsification for Pose-Graph SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13897/) (2022)
- [VIR-SLAM: Visual, Inertial, and Ranging SLAM for single and multi-robot systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.00420/) (2020)
- [Spectral Sparsification for Communication-Efficient Collaborative Rotation and Translation Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05020/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [CP-SLAM: Collaborative Neural Point-based SLAM System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08013/) (2023)
- [MAGiC-SLAM: Multi-Agent Gaussian Globally Consistent SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16785/) (2024)
- [MCN-SLAM: Multi-Agent Collaborative Neural SLAM with Hybrid Implicit Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18678/) (2025)
- [Never-Ending Behavior-Cloning Agent for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00336/) (2024)
- [MAC-Ego3D: Multi-Agent Gaussian Consensus for Real-Time Collaborative Ego-Motion and Photorealistic 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09723/) (2024)
- [GRAND-SLAM: Local Optimization for Globally Consistent Large-Scale Multi-Agent Gaussian SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18885/) (2025)
- [Collaborative Visual Place Recognition through Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13324/) (2024)
- [Self-Localized Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12712/) (2024)
- [A Benchmark Dataset for Collaborative SLAM in Service Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14775/) (2024)
- [DCP-Net: A Distributed Collaborative Perception Network for Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02230/) (2023)
- [Efficient and Distributed Large-Scale 3D Map Registration using Tomographic Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19461/) (2024)
- [SPACE: 3D Spatial Co-operation and Exploration Framework for Robust Mapping and Coverage with Multi-Robot Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02524/) (2024)
- [Cooperative and Asynchronous Transformer-based Mission Planning for Heterogeneous Teams of Mobile Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06372/) (2024)
- [DVM-SLAM: Decentralized Visual Monocular Simultaneous Localization and Mapping for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04126/) (2025)
- [MA3DSG: Multi-Agent 3D Scene Graph Generation for Large-Scale Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04152/) (2026)
- [When Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Meets Wireless Communications: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06995/) (2026)
- [Compact Keyframe-Optimized Multi-Agent Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00804/) (2026)
- [F3DGS: Federated 3D Gaussian Splatting for Decentralized Multi-Agent World Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01605/) (2026)
- [A Survey of Spatial Memory Representations for Efficient Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16482/) (2026)
- [MR-SLAM: Immersive Spatial Supervision for Multi-Robot Mapping via Mixed Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16432/) (2026)
- [MAGiSt3R: Multi-Agent Feed-forward 3D Reconstruction from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15211/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Collaborative Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (C-SLAM) is a vital component for successful multi-robot operations in environments without an external positioning system, such as indoors, underground or underwater. In this paper, we introduce Swarm-SLAM, an open-source C-SLAM system that is designed to be scalable, flexible, decentralized, and sparse, which are all key properties in swarm robotics. Our system supports inertial, lidar, stereo, and RGB-D sensing, and it includes a novel inter-robot loop closure prioritization technique that reduces communication and accelerates convergence. We evaluated our ROS-2 implementation on five different datasets, and in a real-world experiment with three robots communicating through an ad-hoc network. Our code is publicly available: https://github.com/MISTLab/Swarm-SLAM