Local_INN: Implicit Map Representation and Localization with Invertible Neural Networks

Robot localization is an inverse problem of finding a robot's pose using a map and sensor measurements. In recent years, Invertible Neural Networks (INN s) have successfully solved ambiguous inverse problems in various fields. This paper proposes a framework that approaches the localization problem with INN. We design a network that provides implicit map representation in the forward path and localization in the inverse path. By sampling the latent space in evaluation, Local_INN outputs robot poses with covariance, which can be used to estimate the uncertainty. We show that the localization performance of Local_INN is on par with current methods with much lower latency. We show detailed 2D and 3D map reconstruction from Local_INN using poses exterior to the training set. We also provide a global localization algorithm using Local_INN to tackle the kidnapping problem.