# A Plug-and-Play Learning-based IMU Bias Factor for Robust Visual-Inertial Odometry

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12527 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12527/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [VINS-Mono: A Robust and Versatile Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03852/) (2017)
- [Kimera: an Open-Source Library for Real-Time Metric-Semantic Localization and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02490/) (2019)
- [The TUM VI Benchmark for Evaluating Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06120/) (2018)
- [On-Manifold Preintegration for Real-Time Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02363/) (2015)
- [RoNIN: Robust Neural Inertial Navigation in the Wild: Benchmark, Evaluations, and New Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12853/) (2019)
- [IONet: Learning to Cure the Curse of Drift in Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02209/) (2018)
- [TLIO: Tight Learned Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01867/) (2020)
- [Visual-Inertial Mapping with Non-Linear Factor Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06504/) (2019)
- [A General Optimization-based Framework for Global Pose Estimation with Multiple Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.03642/) (2019)
- [Robust Stereo Visual Inertial Odometry for Fast Autonomous Flight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00036/) (2017)
- [Denoising IMU Gyroscopes with Deep Learning for Open-Loop Attitude Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10718/) (2020)
- [IDOL: Inertial Deep Orientation-Estimation and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04024/) (2021)
- [DM-VIO: Delayed Marginalization Visual-Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04114/) (2022)
- [Deep IMU Bias Inference for Robust Visual-Inertial Odometry with Factor Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.04517/) (2022)
- [IMU Data Processing For Inertial Aided Navigation: A Recurrent Neural Network Based Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14286/) (2021)
- [AirIO: Learning Inertial Odometry with Enhanced IMU Feature Observability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15659/) (2025)
- [VIO-DualProNet: Visual-Inertial Odometry with Learning Based Process Noise Covariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11228/) (2023)
- [AirIMU: Learning Uncertainty Propagation for Inertial Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04874/) (2023)
- [HCTO: Optimality-Aware LiDAR Inertial Odometry with Hybrid Continuous Time Optimization for Compact Wearable Mapping System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14173/) (2024)
- [SchurVINS: Schur Complement-Based Lightweight Visual Inertial Navigation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01616/) (2023)
- [SuperVINS: A Real-Time Visual-Inertial SLAM Framework for Challenging Imaging Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21348/) (2024)
- [HelmetPoser: A Helmet-Mounted IMU Dataset for Data-Driven Estimation of Human Head Motion in Diverse Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05006/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [E-S2Feat:Semantic-Guided Spiking Local Feature Detection and Description for Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14027/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate and reliable estimation of biases of low-cost Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) is a key factor to maintain the resilience of Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO), particularly when visual tracking fails in challenging areas. In such cases, bias estimates from the VIO can deviate significantly from the real values because of the insufficient or erroneous vision features, compromising both localization accuracy and system stability. To address this challenge, we propose a novel plug-and-play module featuring the Inertial Prior Network (IPNet), which infers an IMU bias prior by implicitly capturing the motion characteristics of specific platforms. The core idea is inspired intuitively by the observation that different platforms exhibit distinctive motion patterns, while the integration of low-cost IMU measurements suffers from unbounded error that quickly accumulates over time. Therefore, these specific motion patterns can be exploited to infer the underlying IMU bias. In this work, we first directly infer the biases prior only using the raw IMU data using a sliding window approach, eliminating the dependency on recursive bias estimation combining visual features, thus effectively preventing error propagation in challenging areas. Moreover, to compensate for the lack of ground-truth bias in most visual-inertial datasets, we further introduce an iterative method to compute the mean per-sequence IMU bias for network training and release it to benefit society. The framework is trained and evaluated separately on two public datasets and a self-collected dataset. Extensive experiments show that our method significantly improves localization precision and robustness.