Dedicated feature descriptor for outdoor augmented reality detection

Stable augmented reality applications consist of an accurate registration supported by a robust tracking module. In outdoor locations, the changing environmental and light conditions compromise this tracking. Reliable descriptors under unsettled conditions are essential for this process. The most used descriptors have this distinctive capacity, but computers and mobile devices process them in a long time frame. This paper investigates a new lightweight environment dedicated descriptor (EDD) trained with a machine-learning algorithm. The descriptor analyzes the scene characteristics with elements that can be computed fast and that have distinctive information about the selected area. The complete descriptor is used for semantic feature extraction with the aid of a trained random forest classifier. The descriptor is compared with the most popular descriptors—with respect to speed, accuracy, and invariance to illumination changes, scale, affine transformation, and rotation—and the results show that it is faster and in most cases equally reliable .