Measure
Drift
You might say: accumulated error
Drift is accumulated trajectory error from integrating imperfect incremental motion.
- What it does
- Indicates how often the robot needs an absolute reference or loop closure.
- Ask
- What translational drift percentage occurs per 100 m on this robot and route?
- Typical
- KITTI reports average translational error in percent over all 100–800 m subsequences.
What to look for
- Accumulated trajectory error
- Estimated path diverging from a reference
- Error growing along a route
Sources
- Jürgen Sturm et al., Evaluating Egomotion and Structure-from-Motion Approaches Using the TUM RGB-D Benchmark, Sec. V, Relative Pose Error
The relative pose error measures the local accuracy of the trajectory over a fixed time interval Δ.
- Johann Borenstein and Liqiang Feng, UMBmark: A Benchmark Test for Measuring Odometry Errors in Mobile Robots, Secs. 3.2, 4.1; Table I; 4×4 m path
Systematic errors are a property of the robot itself, and they stay almost constant over prolonged periods of time, while non-systematic errors are a function of the properties of the floor.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Drift" (drift) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/robotics/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal