Semi-Direct Visual Odometry Based on Monocular Depth Estimation

Among various visual sensors used in various visual odometry methods, monocular cameras are more suitable for small mobile platforms due to their low costs, light weights and low power consumptions. However, the depth of the scene cannot be measured by monocular camera so all kinds of monocular visual odometry or SLAM algorithms inevitably have the defect of scale ambiguity, which greatly limits their application in real world. To solve the above problems, a semi-direct visual odometry algorithm based on monocular depth estimation is proposed in this paper, we add a monocular depth estimation module into the semi-direct visual odometry, which provides good initial values to the depth filter. In this way, the inherent defect of scale ambiguity is overcome, and the accuracy and robustness of monocular visual odometry are improved.