Data checked 2026-08-13. Data may be stale - beyond the review cycle.
Review cycles are documented on the Methodology page. Methodology
HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/VINS-Mono
Algorithm Tier A slam_vio GPL-3.0
VINS-Mono is a monocular visual-inertial state estimator from HKUST Aerial Robotics, commonly used as a UAV localization baseline on ROS.
Engineering Snapshot
Use cases & tasks 6
- Best suited for
-
- GPS-denied UAV navigation
- Research baseline for monocular VIO
- ROS-based aerial robotics stacks
- Primary tasks
-
- Onboard pose estimation for autonomous flight
- Sensor fusion benchmarking
- SLAM/VIO algorithm comparison
Stack & ecosystem
- Resource type
- Algorithm
- Ecosystem
- state-estimation · vins · vio
License & compliance
- License
-
GPL-3.0(Inferred)
Lifecycle & freshness Show
- Maintenance
- Active
- Latest version
- Not recorded
- Last activity
- 2026-08-13
- Last checked
- 2026-08-13
- Verification
- Official confirmed
What It Solves
Monocular visual-inertial odometry (VIO) for UAV state estimation without GPS, providing 6-DoF pose and velocity estimates from a single camera and IMU.
Primary use cases
- Onboard pose estimation for autonomous flight
- Sensor fusion benchmarking
- SLAM/VIO algorithm comparison
Secondary use cases
- Ground robot localization
- AR/VR tracking reference
- Multi-sensor calibration validation
When to Use
Consider when
- Monocular camera + IMU sensor suite available
- ROS 1 (Melodic/Noetic) or ROS 2 (Humble) middleware
- Need open-source, actively maintained VIO with loop closure
- GPL-3.0 license compatible with project
Verify before adopting
- Scale observability requirements (monocular scale drift)
- Initialization motion constraints (requires sufficient excitation)
- Real-time performance on target compute (CPU-only)
- Calibration quality of camera-IMU extrinsics/intrinsics
- GPL-3.0 obligations for proprietary deployment
Where It Fits
Stack layer perception_localization
Start Here
Adoption Checklist
- Needs verification Scale observability requirements (monocular scale drift)
- Needs verification Initialization motion constraints (requires sufficient excitation)
- Needs verification Real-time performance on target compute (CPU-only)
- Needs verification Calibration quality of camera-IMU extrinsics/intrinsics
- Needs verification GPL-3.0 obligations for proprietary deployment
Each check stays "needs verification" until an official source confirms it; unconfirmed items are never marked verified.
Known Limitations & Unknowns
Known limitations
- Monocular scale ambiguity without external constraints
- Initialization fails with pure rotation or low texture
- CPU-intensive optimization; may need desktop-class compute
- ROS 1 primary; ROS 2 port community-maintained
- No built-in dense mapping or semantic understanding
Not publicly verified
- Quantified accuracy on specific UAV platforms
- Maximum supported IMU/camera rates
- Long-term drift characteristics in aggressive flight
- Maintenance roadmap for ROS 2 native support
Alternatives & Related Tools
Alternatives
- open-vins — Alternative to
- kimera-vio — Alternative to
How is it used?
Start from the recorded entry points below, then validate against the technical checklist.
- Official site https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/VINS-Mono
- Repository https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/VINS-Mono
- Documentation https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/VINS-Mono
Technical checklist
- OK License identified Recorded: GPL-3.0
- OK Maintenance signal Active
- OK Verification status Official confirmed
- OK Source evidence attached 1 source record(s)
- NEEDS REVIEW Latest version recorded Not recorded
Official Links
Metadata & Governance
| License | GPL-3.0 — Inferred |
|---|---|
| Commercial model | Unknown |
| Maintenance status | Active |
| Verification status | Official confirmed — Confirmed via the official repository API responses in SourceRefs below. |
| Latest version | Not recorded |
| Latest release | Not recorded |
| Last activity | 2026-08-13 |
| Last checked | 2026-08-13 |
| First seen | Not recorded |
Dataset facts
Facts above come from the official dataset card only; unconfirmed fields stay unknown.
Related Resources & Dependencies
- open-vins — alternative to (verified)
- kimera-vio — alternative to (verified)
Recent Activity
New resource: HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/VINS-Mono
New repository resource added by the sprint promote pipeline.
Related Knowledge
Guides
- Evaluating SLAM / VIO Systems for UAV Use — A repeatable checklist for comparing open-source SLAM and visual-inertial odometry systems before integrating them into a UAV stack.
Collections
- SLAM / VIO Stack Evaluation — Open-source localization and mapping systems for UAV navigation, inspection and mapping missions.
Comparisons
- ORB-SLAM3 vs VINS-Mono for UAV State Estimation — Metadata and repository facts recorded from the official GitHub API on 2026-08-14. Sensor assumptions are recorded from official README statements. Flight-test behavior, benchmark numbers and certification are deliberately not compared because the indexed sources do not provide field-level evidence.