Instant Outdoor Localization and SLAM Initialization from 2.5D Maps

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics Vol. 21; no. 11; pp. 1309 - 1318
• Main Authors: Arth, Clemens, Pirchheim, Christian, Ventura, Jonathan, Schmalstieg, Dieter, Lepetit, Vincent
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 15.11.2015
• Subjects: Buildings; Cameras; geo-localization; image registration; Image segmentation; Mobile handsets; Simultaneous localization and mapping; SLAM; Solid modeling; Three-dimensional displays; geo-localization; SLAM; image registration; 2D map; outdoor augmented reality
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2015.2459772

We present a method for large-scale geo-localization and global tracking of mobile devices in urban outdoor environments. In contrast to existing methods, we instantaneously initialize and globally register a SLAM map by localizing the first keyframe with respect to widely available untextured 2.5D maps. Given a single image frame and a coarse sensor pose prior, our localization method estimates the absolute camera orientation from straight line segments and the translation by aligning the city map model with a semantic segmentation of the image. We use the resulting 6DOF pose, together with information inferred from the city map model, to reliably initialize and extend a 3D SLAM map in a global coordinate system, applying a model-supported SLAM mapping approach. We show the robustness and accuracy of our localization approach on a challenging dataset, and demonstrate unconstrained global SLAM mapping and tracking of arbitrary camera motion on several sequences.