Parallel tracking and mapping for small AR workspaces

Conference item

This paper presents a method of estimating camera pose in an unknown scene. While this has previously been attempted by adapting SLAM algorithms developed for robotic exploration, we propose a system specifically designed to track a hand-held camera in a small AR workspace. We propose to split tracking and mapping into two separate tasks, processed in parallel threads on a dual-core computer: one thread deals with the task of robustly tracking erratic hand-held motion, while the other produces a 3D map of point features from previously observed video frames. This allows the use of computationally expensive batch optimisation techniques not usually associated with real-time operation: The result is a system that produces detailed maps with thousands of landmarks which can be tracked at frame-rate, with an accuracy and robustness rivalling that of state-of-the-art model-based systems. ©2007 IEEE.

Authors: Klein, G; Murray, D

• Host title: 2007 6th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR
• Publication date: 2007-01-01
• DOI: 10.1109/ISMAR.2007.4538852
• ISBN: 9781424417506