Amirkabir campus dataset: Real-world challenges and scenarios of Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) for visually impaired people

Abstract

Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) algorithms estimate the accurate camera trajectory by using camera and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors. The applications of VIO span a diverse range, including augmented reality and indoor navigation. VIO algorithms hold the potential to facilitate navigation for visually impaired individuals in both indoor and outdoor settings. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art VIO algorithms encounter substantial challenges in dynamic environments, particularly in densely populated corridors. Existing VIO datasets, e.g., ADVIO, typically fail to effectively exploit these challenges. In this paper, we introduce the Amirkabir campus dataset (AUT-VI) to address the mentioned problem and improve the navigation systems. AUT-VI is a novel and super-challenging dataset with 126 diverse sequences in 17 different locations. This dataset contains dynamic objects, challenging loop-closure/map-reuse, different lighting conditions, reflections, and sudden camera movements to cover all extreme navigation scenarios. Moreover, in support of ongoing development efforts, we have released the Android application for data capture to the public. This allows fellow researchers to easily capture their customized VIO dataset variations. In addition, we evaluate state-of-the-art Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) and Visual Odometry (VO) methods on our dataset, emphasizing the essential need for this challenging dataset.