Bundle adjustment with and without damping

• The least squares adjustment (LSA) method is studied as an optimisation problem and shown to be equivalent to the undamped Gauss-Newton (GN) optimisation method. Three problem-independent damping modifications of the GN method are presented: the line-search method of Armijo (GNA); the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm (LM); and Levenberg-Marquardt-Powell (LMP). Furthermore, an additional problem-specific "veto" damping technique, based on the chirality condition, is suggested. In a perturbation study on a terrestrial bundle adjustment problem the GNA and LMP methods with veto damping can increase the size of the pull-in region compared to the undamped method; the LM method showed less improvement. The results suggest that damped methods can, in many cases, provide a solution where undamped methods fail and should be available in any LSA software package. Matlab code for the algorithms discussed is available from the authors.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datorseende och robotik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Vision and Robotics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik -- Beräkningsmatematik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics -- Computational Mathematics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

bundle

adjustment

least squares

convergence

initial values

terrestrial photogrammetry

data- och systemvetenskap

computer and systems sciences

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)