Sensor readings are not state itself. This primer explains observability, Kalman predict/update equations, covariance, numerical examples, control integration, robot implementation, and fault-safe behavior.
September 3, 2026 Computer Vision PrimerVisual Odometry (VO) and Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) estimate the relative motion of a robot or camera from a sequence of images and inertial measurements. This article works through monocular scale ambiguity, IMU preintegration, initialization, filtering versus optimization, implementations such as VINS-Mono and OpenVINS, evaluation metrics, and failure conditions, with math and diagrams.