Any way to know anchor tracking confidence?

[sarimmehdi]

As we already know, if we move far away from an anchor and/ or stop looking at it, it starts drifting. Is there a way to measure the confidence with which ARCore is tracking the anchor? Like a value between 0 and 1.

So, if I move far away from the anchor I can be notified by ARCore that it is tracking the anchor with a low confidence and I take the necessary action.

[ThomasGorisse]

What version of Sceneform are you using?

[sarimmehdi]

I am actually still using the deprecated one and not this one

[ThomasGorisse]

Issue fixed in Sceneform Maintained latest versions

[sarimmehdi]

Can you tell me the name of the method that lets me know the confidence value associated to anchor tracking

[ThomasGorisse]

Answers from Discord (Guys, please continue discussion here)

grassydragon

The anchor is attached to the visual features recognised by ARCore so it should return back to its original pose once you look at it. Actually, I think it is not the anchor drifting but the imprecision of measuring the change in the user pose. Unfortunately, there is no API for accessing the confidence of the anchor.

Giovanni Giorgio

I guess the algorithm used for estimating the anchor pose is being kept a secret? We are working on an AR app that use anchors over a large area and we want to use as few anchors as possible and I was thinking whether there was a way to know how bad the estimation of the anchor is
also, I was under the impression that SLAM updates the pose of the camera and surrounding landmarks (anchors in this case) simultaneously
so, the imprecision would probably be in both the camera and anchors
I guess Google wish to keep their underlying SLAM a secret?

grassydragon

Yes, ARCore has closed source code. I have read a paper about the precision of localisation in an indoor environment using AR (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340047854_Localization_Limitations_of_ARCore_ARKit_and_Hololens_in_Dynamic_Large-scale_Industry_Environments). ARCore and ARKit didn't have very reliable results so I think you just need to do some testing and use some heuristics.

grassydragon

I suppose, yes, but if you don't see the visual features that are used for positioning the anchor you can't update it 😃

Giovanni Giorgio

thanks, it looks like a nice opportunity for research as well