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MAP-Tk

Motion-imagery Aerial Photogrammetry Toolkit

MAP-Tk is an open source C++ collection of libraries and tools for making measurements from aerial video. Initial capability focuses on estimating the camera flight trajectory and a sparse 3D point cloud of the scene. These products are jointly optimized via sparse bundle adjustment and are geo-localized if given additional control points or GPS metadata.

This project has similar goals as projects like Bundler and VisualSFM. However, the focus here in on efficiently processing aerial video rather than community photo collections. Special attention has been given to the case where the variation in depth of the 3D scene is small compared to distance to the camera. In these cases, planar homographies can be used to assist feature tracking, stabilize the video, and aid in solving loop closure problems.

The MAP-Tk software architecture is highly modular and provides an algorithm abstraction layer that allows seamless interchange and run-time selection of algorithms from various other open source projects like OpenCV, VXL, VisCL, and PROJ4. The core library is light-weight with minimal dependencies (C++ standard library plus some Boost components). The tools are written to depend only on the MAP-Tk core library. Additional capabilites are provided in add-on modules that use 3rd party libraries to implement various abstract algorithm interfaces defined in the core.

While the initial software implementation relies on batch post-processing of aerial video. Our intent is to move to an online video stream processing framework and optimize the algorithms to real-time performance for use onboard unmanned aerial vehicles.

Overview of Directories

  • cmake -- contains CMake helper scripts
  • doc -- contains release notes and other documentation
  • maptk -- contains the root of MAP-Tk code base
  • maptk/core -- contains the core library source and headers
  • maptk/core/algo -- contains abstract algorithms and core implementations
  • maptk/ocv -- contains the OpenCV module source and headers
  • maptk/proj -- contains the PROJ4 module source and headers
  • maptk/viscl -- contains the VisCL module source and headers
  • maptk/vxl -- contains the VXL module source and headers
  • scripts -- contains Python helper scripts
  • scripts/blender -- contains Python plug-ins for Blender
  • tests -- contains testing framework and test for each module
  • tools -- contains source for command line utilities
  • tools/config -- contains example config files for command line utilities

Building MAP-Tk

MAP-Tk uses CMake (www.cmake.org) for easy cross-platform compilation. The minimum required version of CMake is 2.8.3, but newer version are recommended.

Running CMake

We recommend building MAP-Tk out of the source directory to prevent mixing source files with compiled products. Create a build directory in parallel with the MAP-Tk source directory. From the command line, enter the empty build directory and run

$ ccmake /path/to/maptk/source

where the path above is the location of your MAP-Tk source tree. The ccmake tool allows for interactive selection of CMake options. Alternatively, using the CMake GUI you can set the source and build directories accordingly and press the "Configure" button.

CMake Options

  • BUILD_SHARED_LIBS -- Set this on to build shared libraries (.so/.dylib/.dll) Note, build shared is currently required for Windows

  • CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE -- The compiler mode, usually Debug or Release

  • CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX -- The path to where you want MAP-Tk to install

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_DOCS -- Turn on building the Doxygen documentation

  • MAPTK_INSTALL_DOCS -- Install Doxygen documentation (requires above enabled)

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_TESTING -- Build the unit tests

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_OPENCV -- Turn on building the OpenCV add-on module

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_PROJ -- Turn on building the PROJ.4 add-on module

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_VISCL -- Turn on building the VisCL add-on module

  • MAPTK_ENABLE_VXL -- Turn on building the VXL add-on module

Dependencies

MAP-Tk has minimal required dependencies at the core level. Enabling add-on modules adds additional capabilities as well as additional dependencies. Some functionality is duplicated between modules to provide choices. Currently a complete set of functionalities in all tools requires either [VisCL, VXL, and Proj] or [OpenCV, VXL, and Proj].

Required

The only hard dependencies of MAP-Tk are on the C++ standard library and Boost (>= v1.48). Currently MAP-Tk uses the following Boost components: system, filesystem, program_options, timer. Additionally, on Windows the Boost chrono component is required by Boost timer.

Optional

Each MAP-Tk add-on module brings in more dependencies for additional functionality. Dependencies for each module are:

Building Doxygen Documentation

If MAPTK_ENABLE_DOCS is enabled, and CMake is provided with a path to the Doxygen tool, then the HTML documentation is built as part of the normal build process under the target "doxygen". Currently each module has its own documentation build. Open ${MAPTK_BUILD_DIR}/docs/core/index.html in your browser to view the documentation. For other modules, replace "core" with the module name (e.g. "ocv", "vxl").

MAP-Tk Tools

MAP-Tk command line tools are placed in the bin directory of the build or install path. These tools are described below.

Summary of MAP-Tk Tools

The primary tools are maptk_track_features and maptk_bundle_adjust_tracks. Together these form the sparse bundle adjustment pipeline. The other tools are for debugging and analysis purposes.

  • maptk_track_featues -- Takes a list of images and produces a feature tracks file.
  • maptk_bundle_adjust_tracks -- Takes feature tracks and produces cameras (KRTD files) and 3D points (PLY file). Can also take input POS files or geo-reference points and produce optimized POS files.
  • maptk_pos2krtd -- Takes POS files and directly produces KRTD.
  • maptk_analyze_tracks -- Takes images and feature tracks and produces tracking statistics or images with tracks overlaid

Running MAP-Tk Tools

Each MAP-Tk tool has the same interface and accepts three command line arguments:

  • -c to specify an input configuration file
  • -o to output the current configuration to a file
  • -h for help (lists these options)

Each tool has all of its options, including paths to input and output files, specified in the configuration file. To get started, run one of the tools like this:

$ maptk_track_features -o config_file.conf

This will produce an initial set of configuration options. You can then edit config_file.conf to specify input/output files, choices of algorithms, and algorithm parameters. Just as in CMake, configuring some parameters will enable new sub-parameters and you need to re-run the tool to get the updated list of parameters. For example

$ maptk_track_features -c config_file.conf -o config_file.conf

The above command will overwrite the existing config file with a new file. Ordering of entries and comments are not preserved. Use a different output file name to prevent overwriting the original. Continue to adjust parameters and re-run the above command until the tool no longer reports the message:

ERROR: Configuration not valid.

Note that the config file itself contains detail comments documenting each parameter. For each abstract algorithm you must specify the name of variant to use, but the list of valid names (based on which modules are compiled) is provided directly in the comment for easy reference. When the config file is complete and valid, run the tool one final time as

$ maptk_track_features -c config_file.conf

An easier way to get started is to use the sample configuration files for each tool that are provided in the tools/config directory. These examples use recommended default settings that are known to produce useful results.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank AFRL/Sensors Directorate for their support of this work via SBIR Contract FA8650-13-M-1694. This document is approved for public release via 88ABW-2014-2119.