A constricted bundle adjustment parameterization for relative scale estimation in visual odometry

In this paper we address the problem of visual motion estimation (visual odometry) from a single vehicle mounted camera. One of the basic issues of visual odometry is relative scale estimation. We propose a method to compute the relative scales of a path by solving a bundle adjustment optimization problem. We introduce a constricted parameterization of the bundle adjustment problem, where only the distances between neighboring cameras are optimized, while the rotation angles and translation directions stay fixed. We will present visual odometry results for image data of a vehicle mounted onmidirectional camera for a track of 1000m length.