In this paper we evaluate performance of the SeqSLAM algorithm for passive vision-based localization in very dark environments with low-cost cameras that result in massively blurred images. We evaluate the effect of motion blur from exposure times up to 10,000 ms from a moving car, and the performance of localization in day time from routes learned at night in two different environments. Finally we perform a statistical analysis that compares the baseline performance of matching unprocessed grayscale images to using patch normalization and local neighborhood normalization - the two key SeqSLAM components. Our results and analysis show for the first time why the SeqSLAM algorithm is effective, and demonstrate the potential for cheap camera-based localization systems that function despite extreme appearance change.

In the field of visual ego-motion estimation for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), fast maneuvers stay challenging mainly because of the big visual disparity and motion blur. In the pursuit of higher robustness, we study convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that predict the relative pose between subsequent images from a fast-moving monocular camera facing a planar scene. Aided by the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), we mainly focus on translational motion. The networks we study have similar small model sizes (around 1.35MB) and high inference speeds (around 10 milliseconds on a mobile GPU). Images for training and testing have realistic motion blur. Departing from a network framework that iteratively warps the first image to match the second with cascaded network blocks, we study different network architectures and training strategies. Simulated datasets and a self-collected MAV flight dataset are used for evaluation. The proposed setup shows better accuracy over existing networks and traditional feature-point-based methods during fast maneuvers. Moreover, self-supervised learning outperforms supervised learning. Videos and open-sourced code are available at https://github.com/tudelft/PoseNet_Planar