Accurate visual localization in outdoor and indoor environments exploiting 3D image spaces as spatial reference

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for visual localization and pose estimation based on 3D image spaces. The method works in indoor and outdoor environments and does not require the presence of control points or markers. The method is evaluated with different sensors in an outdoor and an indoor test field. The results of our research show the viability of single image localization with absolute position accuracies at the decimetre level for outdoor environments and 5 cm or better for indoor environments. However, the evaluation also revealed a number of limitations of single image visual localization in real-world environments. Some of them could be addressed by an alternative AR-based localization approach, which we also present and compare in this paper. We then discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches and show possibilities for combining them to obtain accurate and robust visual localization in an absolute coordinate frame.