Optimizing Camera Perspective for Stereo Visual Odometry

Visual Odometry (VO) is an integral part of many navigation techniques in mobile robotics. In this work, we investigate how the orientation of the camera affects the overall position estimates recovered from stereo VO. Through simulations and experimental work, we demonstrate that this error can be significantly reduced by changing the perspective of the stereo camera in relation to the moving platform. Specifically, we show that orienting the camera at an oblique angle to the direction of travel can reduce VO error by up to 82% in simulations and up to 59% in experimental data. A variety of parameters are investigated for their effects on this trend including frequency of captured images and camera resolution.