# Trust Your IMU: Consequences of Ignoring the IMU Drift

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.08286 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08286/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [On-Manifold Preintegration for Real-Time Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02363/) (2015)
- [Visual-Inertial Monocular SLAM with Map Reuse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05949/) (2016)
- [Beyond Gr"obner Bases: Basis Selection for Minimal Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04360/) (2018)
- [A clever elimination strategy for efficient minimal solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05289/) (2017)
- [Minimal Solutions for Relative Pose with a Single Affine Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.10776/) (2019)
- [A sparse resultant based method for efficient minimal solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.10268/) (2019)
- [Inertial-Only Optimization for Visual-Inertial Initialization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05766/) (2020)
- [Radially-Distorted Conjugate Translations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11339/) (2017)
- [Distortion Varieties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.01860/) (2016)
- [Minimal Solutions for Panoramic Stitching Given Gravity Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00465/) (2020)
- [Rectification from Radially-Distorted Scales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06110/) (2018)
- [Minimal Solvers for Indoor UAV Positioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07111/) (2020)
- [Efficient Real-Time Radial Distortion Correction for UAVs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04203/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Transformation Decoupling Strategy based on Screw Theory for Deterministic Point Cloud Registration with Gravity Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01432/) (2023)
- [B'ezier Degradation Modeling for LiDAR-based Human Motion Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19620/) (2026)
- [Efficient and Robust Absolute Pose Estimation via Gravity-Prior-Driven Transformation Decoupling and Pose Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00713/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we argue that modern pre-integration methods for inertial measurement units (IMUs) are accurate enough to ignore the drift for short time intervals. This allows us to consider a simplified camera model, which in turn admits further intrinsic calibration. We develop the first-ever solver to jointly solve the relative pose problem with unknown and equal focal length and radial distortion profile while utilizing the IMU data. Furthermore, we show significant speed-up compared to state-of-the-art algorithms, with small or negligible loss in accuracy for partially calibrated setups. The proposed algorithms are tested on both synthetic and real data, where the latter is focused on navigation using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We evaluate the proposed solvers on different commercially available low-cost UAVs, and demonstrate that the novel assumption on IMU drift is feasible in real-life applications. The extended intrinsic auto-calibration enables us to use distorted input images, making tedious calibration processes obsolete, compared to current state-of-the-art methods.