Decide first algorithm to test on drone

Description – brief description of the issue to resolve or decision to make

For our first field test with the Phoenix Pro on 3/7  03/07/25 Fire Academy Visit  , we are aiming to port at least 1 algorithm to the drone and test its performance in smoke.
This decision will help focus our development efforts so that we can start testing one subsystem early.

Options – what alternatives were available/considered?

  • Depth
  • Mast3r
  • MoGE
  • Odometry
  • ROVTIO
  • MSO

Resolution – description of the changes or decision made.  If not resolved, put a note like "Pending" here.

We decided to go with MoGE.

Justification – supporting information for why this solution or decision was deemed best

Algorithm will be chosen based on system maturity,  Thermal Camera Calibration   Implement Timesync , and performance in initial investigations,  Mast3r Investigation   MoGE investigation   Implement Odometry 
 - Given the dependency of odometry algorithms on camera-IMU calibrations and camera-imu timesync which are facing implementation roadblocks as of the current time, we decided to go with a depth estimation algorithm to test first.
 - Deciding depth algo: currently, unable to achieve feature matching and metric depth with Mast3r, not at same level of maturity as MoGE. However, point-based reconstruction is still worth some investigation wrt l3d class project
  • Abhishek's l3d project on point-based reconstruction methods (mast3r adjacent)
  • Swastik's l3d project on human detection on point clouds
We have yet to conclusively decide on metric depth performance but we can benchmark this on Mar 7th (no smoke environment).