Google (well not really Google, it’s about Alphabet Inc.) has already acquired at least seven companies that have “robotics” in their name or descriptions. So, they are deeply interested in developing this area with new tools, and better for us if they are open-source like the new one called Cartographer.

If you’re developing self-driving cars, automated forklifts in warehouses, robotic vacuum cleaners, or UAVs, the new Google’s library can do real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in 2D and 3D with ROS support.

Few ideas about the library:

• it can handle the data from various different sensors such as LIDAR, IMU, and cameras to locate the position of the sensor. So, if you use one of these sensors on a robot, you can locate it in a room in relation to a wall, for example.
• you can calculate the distance between two of these sensors in relation with each other and a wall.
• and of course, you can calculate the new position while moving in the room.