*** Apologies for Cross Posting *** Robust Real-Time Camera Localisation and Mapping
Andrew Calway, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bristol Friday, 23rd February, 2-3p.m. Room 1.10, Kilburn Building AG Node Operator, ben.gr...@manchester.ac.uk Significant advances have recently been made in algorithms for real-time estimation of the pose of a moving camera using only visual measurements. There are typically two kinds of scenario. In the general case, no a priori information is available about the structure of the scene, and thus localisation must proceed in tandem with mapping depth values. This is the simultaneous localisation and mapping problem (visual SLAM). In other applications, prior knowledge of scene structure may be available, in the form of CAD or wireframe models, for instance, and these can be utilised to guide camera localisation. In both of these cases, an effective mechanism for robust operation is stochastic filtering, which provides a sound statistical framework for obtaining 'optimal' estimates of the 6-D camera pose and 3-D map. Several systems now exist which can operate in real-time (around 30 fps). In this talk I will describe recent work carried out in these areas at Bristol. We are particularly interested in designing localisation and SLAM algorithms which are robust to effects caused by 'normal' camera use, such as camera shake and visual occlusion. This is a challenging task and many existing algorithms fail in such cases. We have utilised generalised stochastic filtering in the form of particle filters and robust view-invariant feature matching to give algorithms which are able to withstand both severe shake and visual occlusion. This makes them particularly suitable for applications in wearable computing and augmented reality, in which camera movement is often agile and unpredictable. The talk will consist of an overview of stochastic approaches to localisation and SLAM, along with details and examples from our own work. For location and Access Grid information, please see http://www.mc.manchester.ac.uk/research/seminars/
