# obindex

**Repository Path**: mirrors_ethz-asl/obindex

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: obindex
- **Description**: Online Binary Image Index (opencv3-ready)
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: BSD-3-Clause
- **Default Branch**: master
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2020-08-08
- **Last Updated**: 2026-05-23

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

# OBINDEX - Online Binary Image Index

OBINDEX is an open source C++ library for indexing images. It implements a hierarchical indexing scheme to match binary descriptors, which is used as an incremental Bag-Of-Words (BoW) visual vocabulary. This index is combined with an inverted file in order to provide an image database, that can be queried for finding similar images. This online binary visual vocabulary tries to solve the main drawbacks that classical BoW approaches present, avoiding the training step and adapting the visual dictionary to the operating environment.

OBINDEX is released as a ROS package, and relies on OpenCV, FLANN and Boost libraries. It can be used with any binary descriptor computed using the OpenCV format.

Note that OBINDEX is research code. The authors are not responsible for any errors it may contain. Use it at your own risk!

## Related publications

Our approach is detailed in:

**On the Use of Binary Feature Descriptors for Loop Closure Detection**     
Emilio Garcia-Fidalgo and Alberto Ortiz     
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA)     
Barcelona (Spain), 2014

The paper can be downloaded from [here] (http://emiliofidalgo.github.io/static/papers/conf_ETFA_Garcia2014.pdf). If you use this software in an academic work, please cite:

	@INPROCEEDINGS{GarciaFidalgoETFA14,
		author={Garcia-Fidalgo, Emilio and Ortiz, Alberto},
		booktitle={Emerging Technology and Factory Automation (ETFA), 2014 IEEE},
		title={On the use of binary feature descriptors for loop closure detection},
		year={2014},
		month={Sept},
		pages={1-8},
		doi={10.1109/ETFA.2014.7005121}
	}

## Conditions of use

OBINDEX is distributed under the terms of the [BSD License] (http://github.com/emiliofidalgo/obindex/blob/master/LICENSE).

## Installation

1. First of all, you will need to have installed all library dependencies:

	`sudo apt-get install libflann-dev`   
	`sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev`   
	`sudo apt-get install libboost-filesystem-dev`   

2. Clone the repository into your workspace:
	
	`cd ~/your_workspace/src`   
	`git clone https://github.com/emiliofidalgo/obindex.git`   

3. Compile the package using `catkin_make`:
	
	`cd ..`   
	`catkin_make -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release`   

4. You can run an example:
	
	`rosrun obindex test_bindex /directory/of/images`   

## Usage

For an example of use, see the demo file (`src/demo/example.cpp`).

## Known limitations

Currently, the memory allocation is performed during the class initialization and not dynamically. This implies that you should indicate as a parameter (`max_descriptors`) the approximate number of descriptors that you need to index. See the demo file (`src/demo/example.cpp`) to see an example of how to set this parameter.

## Contact

If you have problems or questions using the library, please contact the authors (emilio.garcia@uib.es). Improvements are totally welcome.