Parallel Tracking and Mapping
PTAM (short for Parallel Tracking and Mapping) is a piece of computer vision software which can track the 3D position of a moving camera in real time. It is a SLAM system that does not need any prior information about the world (like markers or known natural feature targets) but instead works out the structure of the world as it goes. PTAM is useful primarily for augmented reality, although it has been applied to other tasks (robot guidance) as well. The system was first demonstrated at the ISMAR 2007 augmented reality conference, and the source code of the PC version has since been made available for general non-commercial use. This blog has news and updates relating to the PTAM source code, which is available at www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk/PTAM.
Parallel Tracking and Multiple Mapping
Parallel Tracking and Multiple Mapping (PTAMM) is an extension to PTAM. The key differences are support for creating and automatically localizing into multiple independent maps, and the ability to serialize maps to and from disk. PTAMM also has the basis of a game framework to allow users to add further games to the 3 included AR games. With multiple maps each map can hold its own AR, and ss the camera is moved from one mapped area to another, PTAMM automatically detects and switches to the relevant map, displaying the correct AR annotations. Detailed installation and usage instructions are also included.
Download the PTAMM Source code for Mac, Linux and Windows from http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~bob/software
MiniPTAM
MiniPTAM is an iPhone version of PTAM, but this is for commercial licensing only.
Licensing PTAM, PTAMM, and MiniPTAM
The PTAM and PTAMM software is free for academic use or a licence can be purchased from Isis Innovation for commercial use. MiniPTAM is only available for commercial use.
Please contact Roy Azoulay at Isis Innovation for licensing information. Isis Innovation is the University of Oxford’s technology transfer company.
Hello there,
First of all, congratulations on the amazing work you’ve done. PTAM looks so great with its tremendous potential in markerless AR.
I am a professor at Georgia Southern University and wonder where I can license the iphone version of PTAM from and what the rate is like. We are actually thinking of using PTAM in our project.
Thanks for your help in advance.
Best,
Jie
Hi,
licensing for any of the PTAM sources is handled by Isis Innovation Limited – you’d have to ask them. I’ll send you an e-mail with some contact information.
Would it be possible to send me this information too? We would like to use PTAM for promotional use.
Many thanks
Ben
Hi There,
Is PTAM available as an Android library? I’m currently doing an M.Sc and we would like to develop a game using this tech
Thanks,
Simon.
No, it’s only widely available for PC.
Hello,
I am a student at the Alpen-Adria-University in Klagenfurt, Austria and a university assistent asked me to do some research about your PTAM project, why and how this is working, some mathematical background and if this is working on smartphones and standard webcams!
Could you please send me some information about this project too please, would really appreciate your help!
Start by reading “Parallel Tracking and Mapping for Small AR Workspaces”, proc ISMAR 2007. You can find other relevant papers on the oxford webserver.
Thank you for your reply Georg Klein! Is there any possibility to get some SLAM related project working on my iPhone? I’ve seen in your video of PTAM + AR on an iPhone 3G that you built an miniSLAM app and that it “can only be licensed commercially” as you told in the FAQs. I just would like to see how it works on my own iPhone, just for testing it in private surroundings, I still don’t know how to connect via software to the iPhone as I haven’t programmed anything on this system but I’ve got some experienced programming skills in C#, is there any good tutorial about this topic online which you could suggest? Thanks in advance!