In this work, we present a camera geopositioning system based on matching a query image against a database with panoramic images. For matching, our system uses memory vectors aggregated from global image descriptors based on convolutional features to facilitate fast searching in the database. To speed up searching, a clustering algorithm is used to balance geographical positioning and computation time. We refine the obtained position from the query image using a new outlier removal algorithm. The matching of the query image is obtained with a recall@5 larger than 90 for panorama-to-panorama matching. We cluster available panoramas from geographically adjacent locations into a single compact representation and observe computational gains of approximately 50 at the cost of only a small (approximately 3 ) recall loss. Finally, we present a coordinate estimation algorithm that reduces the median geopositioning error by up to 20 .
A common factor of the above work is that it either requires the combination of aerial and street-level images for geopositioning, or extensive training on specific datasets. Both cases and their solutions cannot be easily generalized. In our approach, we utilize georeferenced, street-level panoramic images only and a pre-trained CNN combined with image matching techniques for coordinate estimation. This avoids lengthy training and labeling procedures and assumes street-level data to be available without requiring aerial images. Furthermore, and unlike @cite_1 , we do not assume that our query and database images originate from the same imaging devices.
@cite_1
2609950940
Location recognition is commonly treated as visual instance retrieval on "street view" imagery. The dataset items and queries are panoramic views, i.e. groups of images taken at a single location. This work introduces a novel panorama-to-panorama matching process, either by aggregating features of individual images in a group or by explicitly constructing a larger panorama. In either case, multiple views are used as queries. We reach near perfect location recognition on a standard benchmark with only four query views.