Visual Odometry - Research Background
- In the case of environments in which a GPS signal cannot be acquired (i.e forests, buildings, and concentrated urban areas), an alternative localization method is needed.
- Instead of using costly sensors like GPS or laser scanners, a camera is an inexpensive sensor with potential for various applications.
- Research Objectives
- Using a stereo-camera, relative motion between each frame is estimated and robot trajectory is drawn.
- Feature extraction, feature matching, outlier removal and motion estimation is the structure of this algorithm.
- Furthermore, mono-camera and Kinect are to be utilized to reduce processing time and to deal with dark environments.
- Optimal algorithm that is robust in outdoor environments (where light levels and shadows must be accounted for) is also being researched.
- In the future, drift-error will be resolved using landmarks.
- Research Output
- Improved accuracy was shown using visual odometry (red, stereo-camera) compared to odometry (blue, IMU+encoder)
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