Direct stereo visual odometry based on lines

Abstract

We propose a novel stereo visual odometry approach, which is especially suited for poorly textured environments. We introduce a novel, fast line segment detector and matcher, which detects vertical lines supported by an IMU. The patches around lines are then used to directly estimate the pose of consecutive cameras by minimizing the photometric error. Our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in challenging environments. Our implementation runs in real-time and is therefore well suited for various robotics and augmented reality applications.