A Visible-Thermal Fusion Based Monocular Visual Odometry

The manuscript evaluates the performance of a monocular visual odometry approach when images from different spectra are considered, both independently and fused. The objective behind this evaluation is to analyze if classical approaches can be improved when the given images, which are from different spectra, are fused and represented in new domains. The images in these new domains should have some of the following properties: i) more robust to noisy data; ii) less sensitive to changes (e.g., lighting); iii) more rich in descriptive information, among other. In particular in the current work two different image fusion strategies are considered. Firstly, images from the visible and thermal spectrum are fused using a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) approach. Secondly, a monochrome threshold strategy is considered. The obtained representations are evaluated under a visual odometry framework, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, using different urban and semi-urban scenarios. Comparisons with both monocular-visible spectrum and monocular-infrared spectrum, are also provided showing the validity of the proposed approach.