English

Event-Based Visual Teach-and-Repeat via Fast Fourier-Domain Cross-Correlation

Robotics 2026-03-10 v2 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Abstract

Visual teach-and-repeat (VT&R) navigation enables robots to autonomously traverse previously demonstrated paths using visual feedback. We present a novel event-camera-based VT\&R system. Our system formulates event-stream matching as frequency-domain cross-correlation, transforming spatial convolutions into efficient Fourier-space multiplications. By exploiting the binary structure of event frames and applying image compression techniques, we achieve a processing latency of just 2.88 ms, about 3.5 times faster than conventional camera-based baselines that are optimised for runtime efficiency. Experiments using a Prophesee EVK4 HD event camera mounted on an AgileX Scout Mini robot demonstrate successful autonomous navigation across 3000+ meters of indoor and outdoor trajectories in daytime and nighttime conditions. Our system maintains Cross-Track Errors (XTE) below 15 cm, demonstrating the practical viability of event-based perception for real-time VT\&R navigation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.17287,
  title  = {Event-Based Visual Teach-and-Repeat via Fast Fourier-Domain Cross-Correlation},
  author = {Gokul B. Nair and Alejandro Fontan and Michael Milford and Tobias Fischer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.17287},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

8 Pages, 5 Figures, Under Review

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:48:41.858Z