Odometry

Related papers: 20

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Odometry is the process of estimating a robot's position and orientation over time by integrating motion measurements from onboard sensors. The term originally referred to tracking wheel rotations on wheeled robots, but has expanded to encompass visual odometry (using cameras), lidar odometry (using laser scanners), and inertial odometry (using accelerometers and gyroscopes), as well as tightly fused combinations of these modalities. As a robot moves, each new sensor reading is used to compute an incremental motion estimate that is appended to a running pose trajectory, enabling the robot to track where it is without relying on external infrastructure like GPS. Odometry is a foundational component in autonomous navigation stacks, underpinning simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), path planning, and feedback control. It has been validated across diverse platforms — ground vehicles, aerial drones, and planetary rovers. Because all odometry methods accumulate small errors over time (known as drift), researchers develop correction strategies, loop-closure techniques, and sensor fusion pipelines to maintain accuracy over long distances and durations, making robust odometry critical to any autonomously operating robot.

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