*I post this, not because it's augmented reality, but because it's a *rival* to Augmented Reality. Its a way to do SLAM without doing any SLAM.
*Or, maybe you could say it's a simulated rat reality without the rat in it.
(...)
If you take a robot and move it somewhere else, can it figure out where it is? One way to solve the problem is SLAM, which stands for simultaneous localization and mapping. While running a SLAM algorithm, a robot can explore strange terrain, building a map of its surroundings while at the same time positioning, or localizing, itself within that map.
Wyeth had long been interested in brain-inspired computing, starting with work on neural networks in the late 1980s. And so he and Milford decided to work on a version of SLAM that took its cues from the rat’s neural circuitry. They called it RatSLAM.
There already were numerous flavors of SLAM, and today they number in the dozens, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. What they all have in common is that they rely on two separate streams of data. One relates to what the environment looks like, and robots gather this kind of data using sensors as varied as sonars, cameras, and laser scanners. The second stream concerns the robot itself, or more specifically, its speed and orientation; robots derive that data from sensors like rotary encoders on their wheels or an inertial measurement unit (IMU) on their bodies. A SLAM algorithm looks at the environmental data and tries to identify notable landmarks, adding these to its map. As the robot moves, it monitors its speed and direction and looks for those landmarks; if the robot recognizes a landmark, it uses the landmark’s position to refine its own location on the map.
But whereas most implementations of SLAM aim for highly detailed, static maps, Milford and Wyeth were more interested in how to navigate through an environment that’s in constant flux. Their aim wasn’t to create maps built with costly lidars and high-powered computers—they wanted their system to make sense of space the way animals do....
