Visual odometry and Azure Kinect or stereo visual odometry and stereo camera

Posted by chris.ferra on
URL: http://official-rtab-map-forum.206.s1.nabble.com/Visual-odometry-and-Azure-Kinect-or-stereo-visual-odometry-and-stereo-camera-tp9657.html

Hi Mathieu,
I'm currenlty working on a school project involving the use of rtabmap to map a crop field so as to recognize the cultivations.
For this project, I am using the Intel NUC NUC13ANKi7, which boasts 64GB of RAM and a 1TB NVME disk.
I've tried using the Azure Kinect on ROS2 (Ubuntu 22.04), but unfortunately I didn't get good results: the odometry estimated by rtabmap was easily lost, even when attempting to map simpler environments such as my bedroom.
In this thread I asked for help using The Rosario Dataset (which includes stereo images captured by ZED stereo camera) to simulate the mapping process on a crop field. In that discussion, you showed me that the rtabmap odometry was accurate compared to the GPS positions. Even in the presence of irregularities in the field that caused the camera to shake, the odometry estimation process appeared to perform well.
I'm now considering whether I might achieve better results by using a stereo camera like the ZED with rtabmap stereo visual odometry, as opposed to the Azure Kinect with rtabmap visual odometry. Do you think I would have the same problem with the odometry estimation process?
I understand that this request may appear self-evident (as experimentation often provides the clearest insights), but it's essential for our lab to make an informed decision regarding the potential purchase of a stereo camera.

Thank you in advance for your time and kindness.
Best regards,
Christian