ParallaxBA: bundle adjustment using parallax angle feature parametrization

The main contribution of this paper is a novel feature parametrization based on parallax angles for bundle adjustment (BA) in structure and motion estimation from monocular images. It is demonstrated that under certain conditions, describing feature locations using their Euclidean XYZ coordinates or using inverse depth in BA leads to ill-conditioned normal equations as well as objective functions that have very small gradients with respect to some of the parameters describing feature locations. The proposed parallax angle feature parametrization in BA (ParallaxBA), avoids both of the above problems leading to better convergence properties and more accurate motion and structure estimates. Simulation and experimental datasets are used to demonstrate the impact of different feature parametrizations on BA, and the improved convergence, efficiency and accuracy of the proposed ParallaxBA algorithm when compared with some existing BA packages such as SBA, sSBA and g2o. The C/C++ source code of ParallaxBA is available on OpenSLAM (https://openslam.org/).