SAP-SLAM: Semantic-Assisted Perception SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting

Abstract

The integration of 3D Gaussians has introduced a novel scene representation in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), characterized by explicit representation and differentiable rendering capabilities that enhance scene reconstruction and understanding. However, most current SLAM systems only exploit the basic representational capacity of 3D Gaussians, neglecting their potential to offer richer information and facilitate higher-dimensional scene comprehension. Furthermore, these systems often struggle with reconstruction when encountering rapid camera movements or depth missing. Drawing inspiration from 3D language field, which explores the intrinsic relationships among scene objects, we propose SAPSLAM, a dense SLAM system that combines high-fidelity reconstruction and advanced semantic understanding. Our approach leverages pre-trained visual models to extract semantic features, which are then fused, dimensionally reduced, and encoded into the 3D Gaussian model for optimization and rendering. The integration of these features improves the systems semantic comprehension and scene representation, ultimately enabling the creation of high-precision 3D semantic maps. Additionally, we introduce a semantic-guided Gaussian densification and pruning strategy, which uses semantic consistency to prioritize attention on poorly reconstructed areas, greatly improving performance in complex scenarios. SAP-SLAM achieves competitive results on both real-world and synthetic datasets, demonstrating superior capabilities in semantic understanding and reconstruction.