Learning Cross-Spectral Point Features with Task-Oriented Training

Mia Thomas; Trevor Ablett; Jonathan Kelly

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arXiv · 2505.12593

Learning Cross-Spectral Point Features with Task-Oriented Training

Mia Thomas·Trevor Ablett·Jonathan Kelly

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Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) enable operations in remote and hazardous environments, yet the visible-spectrum, camera-based navigation systems often relied upon by UAVs struggle in low-visibility conditions. Thermal cameras, which capture long-wave infrared radiation, are able to function effectively in darkness and smoke, where visible-light cameras fail. This work explores learned cross-spectral (thermal-visible) point features as a means to integrate thermal imagery into established camera-based navigation systems. Existing methods typically train a feature network's detection and description outputs directly, which often focuses training on image regions where thermal and visible-spectrum images exhibit similar appearance. Aiming to more fully utilize the available data, we propose a method to train the feature network on the tasks of matching and registration. We run our feature network on thermal-visible image pairs, then feed the network response into a differentiable registration pipeline. Losses are applied to the matching and registration estimates of this pipeline. Our selected model, trained on the task of matching, achieves a registration error (corner error) below 10 pixels for more than 75% of estimates on the MultiPoint dataset. We further demonstrate that our model can also be used with a classical pipeline for matching and registration.

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BibTeX RIS

Mia Thomas, Trevor Ablett, Jonathan Kelly. 2025-05-21. Learning Cross-Spectral Point Features with Task-Oriented Training. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12593

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