OrthoLoC: UAV 6-DoF Localization and Calibration Using Orthographic Geodata
This addresses UAV localization for mapping and inspection applications, but is incremental as it builds on existing feature matching methods with a new dataset and refinement.
The paper tackles the problem of accurate visual localization for UAVs in resource-limited environments by introducing OrthoLoC, a large-scale dataset of 16,425 UAV images with orthographic geodata, and shows that their AdHoP refinement technique improves matching by up to 95% and reduces translation error by up to 63%.
Accurate visual localization from aerial views is a fundamental problem with applications in mapping, large-area inspection, and search-and-rescue operations. In many scenarios, these systems require high-precision localization while operating with limited resources (e.g., no internet connection or GNSS/GPS support), making large image databases or heavy 3D models impractical. Surprisingly, little attention has been given to leveraging orthographic geodata as an alternative paradigm, which is lightweight and increasingly available through free releases by governmental authorities (e.g., the European Union). To fill this gap, we propose OrthoLoC, the first large-scale dataset comprising 16,425 UAV images from Germany and the United States with multiple modalities. The dataset addresses domain shifts between UAV imagery and geospatial data. Its paired structure enables fair benchmarking of existing solutions by decoupling image retrieval from feature matching, allowing isolated evaluation of localization and calibration performance. Through comprehensive evaluation, we examine the impact of domain shifts, data resolutions, and covisibility on localization accuracy. Finally, we introduce a refinement technique called AdHoP, which can be integrated with any feature matcher, improving matching by up to 95% and reducing translation error by up to 63%. The dataset and code are available at: https://deepscenario.github.io/OrthoLoC.