KR-Net: A Dependable Visual Kidnap Recovery Network for Indoor Spaces

In this paper, we propose a dependable visual kidnap recovery (KR) framework that pinpoints a unique pose in a given 3D map when a device is turned on. For this framework, we first develop indoor-GeM (i-GeM), which is an extension of GeM [1] but considerably more robust than other global descriptors [2]-[4], including GeM itself. Then, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based system called KR-Net, which is based on a coarse-to-fine paradigm as in [5] and [6]. To our knowledge, KR-Net is the first network that can pinpoint a wake-up pose with a confidence level near 100% within a 1.0 m translational error boundary. This dependable success rate is enabled not only by i-GeM, but also by a combinatorial pooling approach that uses multiple images around the wake-up spot, whereas previous implementations [5], [6] were constrained to a single image. Experiments were conducted in two challenging datasets: a large-scale (12,557 m
²
) area with frequent featureless or repetitive places and a place with significant view changes due to a one-year gap between prior modeling and query acquisition. Given 59 test query sets (eight images per pose), KR-Net successfully found all wake-up poses, with average and maximum errors of 0.246 m and 0.983 m, respectively.