Stereo Vision 3D Map Registration for Airships using Vision-Inertial Sensing

A depth map registration method is proposed in this article, and experimental results are presented for long three-dimensional map sequences obtained from a moving observer. In vision based systems used in mobile robotics the perception of self-motion and the structure of the environment is essential. Inertial and earth field magnetic pose sensors can provide valuable data about camera ego-motion, as well as absolute references for structure feature orientations. In this work we explore the fusion of stereo techniques with data from the inertial and magnetic sensors, enabling registration of 3D maps aquired by a moving observer. The article reviews the camera-inertial calibration used, other works on registering stereo point clouds from aerial images, as well as related problems as robust image matching. The map registration approach is presented and validated with experimental results on ground outdoor environments.