Feature Localization Error in 3D Computer Vision

Uncertainty modeling in 3D Computer Vision typically relies on propagating the uncertainty of measured feature positions through the modeling equations to obtain the uncertainty of the 3D shape being estimated. It is widely believed that this adequately captures the uncertainties of estimated geometric properties when there are no large errors due to mismatching. However, we identify another source of error which we call feature localization error. This captures how well a feature corresponds to the true 3D point, rather than how well features correspond over multiple images. We model this error as independent of the tracking error, and when combined as part of the total error, we show that it is significant and may even dominate the 3D reconstruction error.