Pose Determination and Tracking in Image Mosaic Based Vehicle Position Estimation

Mosaic based vehicle position estimation is a new technique for locating moving vehicles in known environments. Large scale mosaics of exterior yard or interior building surfaces are constructed when the system is installed. The motion over the known scene of a camera mounted to the vehicle is continuously tracked in the mosaic. Unlike in more classical visual tracking, the field of view of successive images do not overlap at all so odometry and successful reference to the prestored mosaic can be critical. The tracking algorithm of such a system is described.