Landmark2Vec: An Unsupervised Neural Network-Based Landmark Positioning Method

Abstract: A Neural Network-based method for unsupervised landmarks map estimation from measurements taken from landmarks is introduced. The measurements needed for training the network are the signals observed/received from landmarks by an agent. The definition of landmarks, agent, and the measurements taken by agent from landmarks is rather broad here: landmarks can be visual objects, e.g., poles along a road, with measurements being the size of landmark in a visual sensor mounted on a vehicle (agent), or they can be radio transmitters, e.g., WiFi access points inside a building, with measurements being the Received Signal Strength (RSS) heard from them by a mobile device carried by a person (agent). The goal of the map estimation is then to find the positions of landmarks up to a scale, rotation, and shift (i.e., the topological map of the landmarks). Assuming that there are $L$ landmarks, the measurements will be $L \times 1$ vectors collected over the area. A shallow network then will be trained to learn the map without any ground truth information.