# A New Approach to ORB Acceleration Using a Modern Low-Power Microcontroller

## TL;DR

This paper presents a low-power microcontroller-based solution for accelerating the ORB algorithm in visual SLAM systems, offering lower power consumption compared to hardware alternatives.

## Contribution

A novel low-power microcontroller-based approach for ORB acceleration, providing a cost-effective alternative to hardware-accelerated solutions.

## Key findings

- ORB execution time reaches 0.6 seconds for 1241 × 376 resolution images, slower than hardware solutions but viable for some applications.
- Power consumption ranges between 30 and 40 milliwatts, lower than FPGA-based alternatives.
- The proposed method allows for future optimizations to improve performance.

## Abstract

A key component in visual Simultaneous Location And Mapping (SLAM) systems is feature extraction and description. One common algorithm that accomplishes this purpose is Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF (ORB), which is used in state-of-the-art SLAM systems like ORB-SLAM. While it is faster than other feature detectors like SIFT (340 times faster) or SURF (15 times faster), it is one of the most computationally expensive algorithms in these types of systems. This problem has commonly been solved by delegating this task to hardware-accelerated solutions like FPGAs or ASICs. While this solution is useful, it incurs a greater economical cost. This work proposes a solution for feature extraction and description based on a modern low-power mainstream microcontroller. The execution time of ORB, along with power consumption, are analyzed in relation to the number of feature points and internal variables. The results show a maximum of 0.6 s for ORB execution in 1241 × 376 resolution images, which is significantly slower than other hardware-accelerated solutions but remains viable for certain applications. Additionally, the power consumption ranges between 30 and 40 milliwatts, which is lower than FPGA solutions. This work also allows for future optimizations that will improve the results of this paper.