Multi-modal positioning

Localization technologies have been an important focus in ubiquitous computing. This paper explores an underrepresented area, namely computer vision technology, for outdoor positioning. More specifically we explore two modes of positioning in a challenging real world scenario: single snapshot based positioning, improved by a novel highdimensional feature matching method, and continuous positioning enabled by combination of snapshot and incremental positioning. Quite interestingly, vision enables localization accuracies comparable to GPS. Furthermore the paper also analyzes and compares possibilities offered by the combination of different subsets of positioning technologies such as WiFi, GPS and dead reckoning in the same real world scenario as for vision based positioning.

Figure: Multi-modal positioning. Left the concept of image based positioning is shown. Right the results for multi modal positioning are given. The traces are color coded as follows: groundtruth (red), GPS (orange), GPS&DR (blue), Vision&DR (green). Vision with Dead Reckoning yields same or even better localization than GPS alone.

Link to PDF:

Ulrich Steinhoff, Dušan Omerčcević, Roland Perko, Bernt Schiele, and Ales Leonardis. How computer vision can help in outdoor positioning. In European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, volume 4794, pages 124-141, Darmstadt, Germany, November 2007.