Comparative study of visual feature extraction methods for building retrieval on urban databases

In a great variety of applications, such as real-time robot localization and visual navigation, architectural design, 3D city reconstruction, building recognition in urban environments is required. In this work a comparative study of visual feature extraction methods for building retrieval on urban databases is performed. To this end, a database of 183 building facades taken at two different regions near the center of Athens was created. Five feature extraction methods are used in order to capture visual properties. Features between images are then matched using RANSAC algorithm and a visual transformation is calculated. Comparative retrieval results are provided and discussed.