Visual Odometry with an Appearance-based Method
L. Fernández, L. Payá, M. Juliá, F. Amorós, O. Reinoso
ROBOT 2011. Robótica Experimental  (Sevilla, Noviembre de 2011)
Ed. Universidad de Sevilla

Abstract:

In this paper we present an efficient method to
solve the problem of map creation and localization of a mobile
robot using omnidirectional images. We propose a real-time
algorithm for topological mapping, using as input data only
a set of images captured by a single omnidirectional camera
mounted at a fixed position on the mobile robot. We use
techniques based in the global appearance of the images to
compute the topological relationships between locations in the
map. When using these methods, it is important to remove
redundant information to get an acceptable computational
cost when comparing locations. With this aim, we describe
each omnidirectional image by a single Fourier descriptor that
represents the appearance as well as the relative orientation
between images. This algorithm permits computing the relative
topological position of a location with respect to the previous
one, acting as a visual compass. Experiments were conducted in
a variety of environments to study the validity of the proposed
visual odometry and topological mapping and to perform an
objective comparison between the results obtained using the
robot odometry, our visual odometry and the ground truth.
We have also checked the time consumption to carry out the
process and the geometrical accuracy obtained comparing to
the ground truth.