ZippyPoint: Fast Interest Point Detection, Description, and Matching through Mixed Precision Discretization

The design of more complex and powerful neural network models has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art in local feature detection and description. These advances can be attributed to deeper networks, improved training methodologies through self-supervision, or the introduction of new building blocks, such as graph neural networks for feature matching. However, in the pursuit of increased performance, efficient architectures that generate lightweight descriptors have received surprisingly little attention. In this paper, we investigate the adaptations neural networks for detection and description require in order to enable their use in embedded platforms. To that end, we investigate and adapt network quantization techniques for use in real-time applications. In addition, we revisit common practices in descriptor quantization and propose the use of a binary descriptor normalization layer, enabling the generation of distinctive length-invariant binary descriptors. ZippyPoint, our efficient network, runs at 47.2 fps on the Apple M1 CPU. This is up to 5x faster than other learned detection and description models, making it the only real-time learned network. ZippyPoint consistently outperforms all other binary detection and descriptor methods in visual localization and homography estimation tasks. Code and trained models will be released upon publication.