Feature-less environments
The topic of 3D reconstruction is a long-standing topic within the computer vision research community.
A common approach to generating a 3D point cloud from a sequence of image of video frames is to use a Structure-from-motion pipeline.
This style of approach has been demonstrated on user-generated imagery and indoor environments.
Similarly, Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) techniques generally aim for online estimation of camera pose estimation and key feature locations.
The PTAM framework, for example, is designed for AR usage and has been shown to work on a mobile phone.
However, both SLAM and AAA approaches are not yet robust for all indoor scenarios. Large sections of interior walls either lack the texture required for feature detection and matching or require long model generation times.