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Robotics Research pp 535–555Cite as

Towards Large-Scale Visual Mapping and Localization

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Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics ((STAR,volume 70))

Abstract

The topic of this paper is large-scale mapping and localization from images. We first describe recent progress in obtaining large-scale 3D visual maps from images only. Our approach consists of a multi-stage processing pipeline, which can process a recorded video stream in real-time on standard PC hardware by leveraging the computational power of the graphics processor. The output of this pipeline is a detailed textured 3D model of the recorded area. The approach is demonstrated on video data recorded in Chapel Hill containing more than a million frames. While for these results GPS and inertial sensor data was used, we further explore the possibility to extract the necessary information for consistent 3D mapping over larger areas from images only. In particular, we discuss our recent work focusing on estimating the absolute scale of motion from images as well as finding intersections where the camera path crosses itself to effectively close loops in the mapping process. For this purpose we introduce viewpoint-invariant patches (VIP) as a new 3D feature that we extract from 3D models locally computed from the video sequence. These 3D features have important advantages with respect to traditional 2D SIFT features such as much stronger viewpoint-invariance, a relative pose hypothesis from a single match and a hierarchical matching scheme robust to repetitive structures. In addition, we also briefly discuss some additional work related to absolute scale estimation and multi-camera calibration.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Visual Computing, ETH Zürich,  

    Marc Pollefeys, Friedrich Fraundorfer & Christopher Zach

  2. Dept. of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  

    Jan-Michael Frahm, Changchang Wu, Brian Clipp & David Gallup

Authors
  1. Marc Pollefeys
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  2. Jan-Michael Frahm
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  3. Friedrich Fraundorfer
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  4. Christopher Zach
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  5. Changchang Wu
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  6. Brian Clipp
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  7. David Gallup
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems Autonomous Systems Lab , ETH Zürich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Cédric Pradalier  & Roland Siegwart  & 

  2. Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics , German Aerospace Center (DLR), Münchner Strasse 20, 82234, Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling, Germany

    Gerhard Hirzinger

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Pollefeys, M. et al. (2011). Towards Large-Scale Visual Mapping and Localization. In: Pradalier, C., Siegwart, R., Hirzinger, G. (eds) Robotics Research. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 70. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19457-3_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19457-3_32

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19456-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19457-3

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