Online 6 DOF Augmented Reality Registration from Natural Features

Abstract

We present a complete scalable system for 6 d.o.f. camera tracking based on natural features. Crucially, the calculation is based only on pre-captured reference images and previous estimates of the camera pose and is hence suitable for online applications. We match natural features in the current frame to two spatially separated reference images. We overcome the wide baseline matching problem by matching to the previous frame and transferring point positions to the reference images. We then minimize deviations from the two-view and three-view constraints between the reference images and the current frame as a function of the camera position parameters. We stabilize this calculation using a recursive form of temporal regularization that is similar in spirit to the Kalman filter. We can track camera pose over hundreds of frames and realistically integrate virtual objects with only slight jitter