A Comparative Evaluation of Classical and Deep Learning-Based Visual Odometry Methods for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation

This study introduces a comprehensive benchmarking framework for evaluating visual odometry (VO) methods, combining classical, learning-based, and hybrid approaches. We assess 52 configurations—spanning 19 keypoint detectors, 21 descriptors, and 4 matchers—across two widely used benchmark datasets: KITTI and EuRoC. Six key trajectory metrics, including Absolute Trajectory Error (ATE) and Final Displacement Error (FDE), provide a detailed performance comparison under various environmental conditions, such as motion blur, occlusions, and dynamic lighting. Our results highlight the critical role of feature matchers, with the LightGlue–SIFT combination consistently outperforming others across both datasets. Additionally, learning-based matchers can be integrated with classical pipelines, improving robustness without requiring end-to-end training. Hybrid configurations combining classical detectors with learned components offer a balanced trade-off between accuracy, robustness, and computational efficiency, making them suitable for real-world applications in autonomous systems and robotics.