DarkLoc: Attention-based Indoor Localization Method for Dark Environments Using Thermal Images

Image-based localization is an essential component for many applications such as autonomous driving, virtual reality. Many researchers focus on developing methods for daytime via RGB images. Few research study the methods for night condition. The main reason is that the RGB-based image localization methods fail to work in dark scenes due to the low illumination. Thermal images capture temperature information instead of texture, making it well suitable for dark environments. However, thermal image-based localization methods are not well studied. To address it, we propose an attention-based localization method for night condition (DarkLoc) using thermal images. The proposed method introduce the attention mechanism in a deep learning-based framework to extract key information from low quality thermal images. The attention model can enforce the whole network focus on geometry meaningful feature in thermal images and thus improve the localization accuracy. We perform extensive experiment on the thermal image dataset. The results show that the attention model can enforce the whole network to learn geometry meaningful feature from thermal images and effectively locate the thermal image in real-time.