VO-Sim: A generic framework for tuning and evaluating visual odometry systems

Abstract

Visual odometry (VO) is gaining a huge popularity in many disciplines and applications. All the way from smart driving, robotics, surveillance, search and rescue missions, among many others. This is due to the availability of high-performance inexpensive cameras and the revolutionary advances in the accuracy and precision of different VO algorithms. One of the main issues designers of such algorithms confront is the tuning of different systems' parameters as well as the testing and evaluation of their algorithms across a wide range of configurations. In this paper, a brief overview of different efforts exerted to solve this problem is given. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the need to design a generic extendable framework and a simulator for VO engines that take different design considerations into account. Consequently, the paper proposes a framework for testing, evaluating, and simulating conventional monocular VO engines in order to solve the two previously mentioned problems. The paper also discusses briefly different available options for extending the functionality of this framework to cover a wider range of VO engines and algorithms.