In the past few years, lots of works were achieved on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). It is now possible to follow in real time the trajectory of a moving camera in an unknown environment. However, current SLAM methods are still prone to drift errors, which prevent their use in large-scale applications. In this paper, we propose a solution to reduce those errors a posteriori. Our solution is based on a postprocessing algorithm that exploits additional geometric constraints, relative to the environment, to correct both the reconstructed geometry and the camera trajectory. These geometric constraints are obtained through a coarse 3D modelisation of the environment, similar to those provided by GIS database. First, we propose an original articulated transformation model in order to roughly align the SLAM reconstruction with this 3D model through a non-rigid ICP step. Then, to refine the reconstruction, we introduce a new bundle adjustment cost function that includes, in a single term, the usual 3D point/ID observation consistency constraint as well as the geometric constraints provided by the 3D model. Results on large-scale synthetic and real sequences show that our method successfully improves SLAM reconstructions. Besides, experiments prove that the resulting reconstruction is accurate enough to be directly used for global relocalization applications.

International audience

In this paper we describe a method that estimates the motion of a calibrated camera (settled on an experimental vehicle) and the tridimensional geometry of the environment. The only data used is a video input. In fact, interest points are tracked and matched between frames at video rate. Robust estimates of the camera motion are computed in real-time, key-frames are selected and permit the features 3D reconstruction. The algorithm is particularly appropriate to the reconstruction of long images sequences thanks to the introduction of a fast and local bundle adjustment method that ensures both good accuracy and consistency of the estimated camera poses along the sequence. It also largely reduces computational complexity compared to a global bundle adjustment. Experiments on real data were carried out to evaluate speed and robustness of the method for a sequence of about one kilometer long. Results are also compared to the ground truth measured with a differential GPS.

This paper introduces an incremental method for "structure from motion" of complex scenes from a video sequence. More precisely, we estimate the 3D positions of the viewed points in images and the camera positions and orientations through the sequence. The method can be seen as a fast but accurate alternative to classical reconstruction methods that use bundle adjustment, and that can become slow and computation time expensive for very long scenes. Our results are compared to the reconstruction obtained by the classical hierarchical bundle adjustment method. They have also been successfully used as a reference sequence for the vision based localization of an autonomous mobile robot

This paper deals with the use of a 2D parametric motion model in a spatio-temporal filtering scheme to reduce noise in image sequences. We estimate with a robust method an affine motion model accounting for the dominant image motion. Then, we cancel it before applying an adaptive spatiotemporal filter. We have compared the performance of several filtering techniques and evaluated the influence of the motion compensation step on this performance.

We propose a low cost scheme for reconstructing high resolution images from noisy, and eventually blurred image sequences. The super-resolution is achieved by an iterative back projection method. To account for noise in image sequence, we first apply a spatio-temporal Wiener filter computed via a 3D DFT. In the filtering process, we need to compensate for apparent motion to ensure proper results. Furthermore, the knowledge of subpixel motion is necessary for super-resolution. In both cases, we exploit a parametric motion model to keep a good trade-off between accuracy and computation time.