Visual Odometry System Using Multiple Stereo Cameras and Inertial Measurement Unit

Over the past decade, tremendous amount of research activity has focused around the problem of localization in GPS denied environments. Challenges with localization are highlighted in human wearable systems where the operator can freely move through both indoors and outdoors. In this paper, we present a robust method that addresses these challenges using a human wearable system with two pairs of backward and forward looking stereo cameras together with an inertial measurement unit (IMU). This algorithm can run in real-time with 15Hz update rate on a dual-core 2GHz laptop PC and it is designed to be a highly accurate local (relative) pose estimation mechanism acting as the front-end to a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) type method capable of global corrections through landmark matching. Extensive tests of our prototype system so far, reveal that without any global landmark matching, we achieve between 0.5% and 1% accuracy in localizing a person over a 500 meter travel indo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CVPR
• Authors: Taragay Oskiper, Zhiwei Zhu, Supun Samarasekera, Rakesh Kumar
• Keywords: Computer Vision, CVPR 2007, Gps Denied Environments, Human Wearable Systems, Landmark Matching, Meter Travel Indoors, Pose Estimation Mechanism