ESP32 Cam for offline SLAM

looks like Cosmo uses a  Qualcomm Snapdragon 410E processor which is essentially a cellphone. That could potentially enable onboard slam at a small form factor. Anyone aware of any microcontrollers that use a similar processor in a small formfactor? The more I dive in to this the more Im amazing at how much capability ANKI were able to put into a small space.

@anupamd No idea what SLAM is all about, but you mention 

BLE for WIFI

which is quite troubling as they are two separate and different radios.

You also say you want to use esp32-cam. Are you aware that there are very few free pins. If you do intend to use WiFi, what will happen to the Camera portion of the esp32-cam that needs dedicated WiFi in order to operate.

@zander it appears to be 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_mapping

@yurkshirelad Ok, so that's the theory, but do you think the esp32-cam is the right choice? And I am still waiting to hear how the 'BLE for WiFi' works. Also, the esp32-cam has only 10 available pins and it is pretty busy running that camera.

My point is I think there are much better choices and keep in mind I have over a dozen of those esp32-cam's but I use them as they were designed to be used, cheap low quality WiFi cameras.

Posted by: @anupamd

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I want to do some sort of offline SLAM like the guys from ANKI did in this very interesting talk. (youtube link goes directly to the segment). Why offline? Because I want to use a low cost, low size controller (like an Arduino ) .

You can see they are doing some kind of SLAM based navigation. The Anki Cosmo/Vector uses a pretty low cost microcontroller. I believe they are using BLE for WIFI coms to a smartphone but for navigation Im also sure they are doing this offline somehow.

 

In the end I guess my question is would  an ESP32 cam via wifi be fast enough latency wise to perform decent enough SLAM? I could relay motor commands back via BLE so that the motor control comps dont interfere with the video signal.

 

Im pretty new to all this so this is just a thought experiment at this point. Im trying to determine the right Architecture and approach for this before I start experimenting.

 

Size is the constraint for me,  I realize there are larger microcontrollers out there (Raspberry PI/JetsonNano..etc) but these are not ideal for the form factor im looking for.  A robot about the size of a polulu zumo or 3pi would be ideal.

-A

 

 

I think ESP32 is not a good choice for the task you have described. You can think about Teensy 4.1. 

@aliarifat Yes, that is a very powerful board, but is the OP experienced enough to leverage the software side of it?