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Selective visual odometry for accurate AUV localization

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Abstract

In this paper we present a stereo visual odometry system developed for autonomous underwater vehicle localization tasks. The main idea is to make use of only highly reliable data in the estimation process, employing a robust keypoint tracking approach and an effective keyframe selection strategy, so that camera movements are estimated with high accuracy even for long paths. Furthermore, in order to limit the drift error, camera pose estimation is referred to the last keyframe, selected by analyzing the feature temporal flow. The proposed system was tested on the KITTI evaluation framework and on the New Tsukuba stereo dataset to assess its effectiveness on long tracks and different illumination conditions. Results of a live archaeological campaign in the Mediterranean Sea, on an AUV equipped with a stereo camera pair, show that our solution can effectively work in underwater environments.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the European ARROWS project, founded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research technological development and demonstration, under grant agreement no. 308724.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computational Vision Group (CVG), University of Florence, Via S. Marta, 3, Florence, Italy

    Fabio Bellavia, Marco Fanfani & Carlo Colombo

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  1. Fabio Bellavia
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  2. Marco Fanfani
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  3. Carlo Colombo
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Correspondence to Marco Fanfani.

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Bellavia, F., Fanfani, M. & Colombo, C. Selective visual odometry for accurate AUV localization. Auton Robot 41, 133–143 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-015-9541-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-015-9541-1

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