Frame-Frame Matching for Realtime Consistent Visual Mapping

Many successful indoor mapping techniques employ frame-to-frame matching of laser scans to produce detailed local maps, as well as closing large loops. In this paper, we propose a framework for applying the same techniques to visual imagery, matching visual frames with large numbers of point features. The relationship between frames is kept as a nonlinear measurement, and can be used to solve large loop closures quickly. Both monocular (bearing-only) and binocular vision can be used to generate matches. Other advantages of our system are that no special landmark initialization is required, and large loops can be solved very quickly.