Visual compass

[Lab04] (pdf)

Frédéric Labrosse. Visual compass. In Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, University of Essex, Colchester, UK, 2004.

We present in this paper a method to incrementally estimate the heading of a robot using panoramic images grabbed while the robot moves in its environment. We present results that show a performance similar to a magnetic compass. In particular, the heading measured by the visual compass does not drift as normal odometry does. We discuss the performance of the system as well as its limitations. We also briefly give examples of applications where the visual compass could be used and constitute an improvement.