To support faster development *and* better performance Richard and I pushed through a large refactoring of NonlinearFactors.
The following are the biggest changes:
1) NonLinearFactor1 and NonLinearFactor2 are now templated on Config, Key type, and X type, where X is the argument to the measurement function.
2) The measurement itself is no longer kept in the nonlinear factor. Instead, a derived class (see testVSLAMFactor, testNonlinearEquality, testPose3Factor etc...) has to implement a function to compute the errors, "evaluateErrors". Instead of (h(x)-z), it needs to return (z-h(x)), so Ax-b is an approximation of the error. IMPORTANT: evaluateErrors needs - if asked - *combine* the calculation of the function value h(x) and the derivatives dh(x)/dx. This was a major performance issue. To do this, boost::optional<Matrix&> arguments are provided, and tin EvaluateErrors you just says something like
if (H) *H = Matrix_(3,6,....);
3) We are no longer using int or strings for nonlinear factors. Instead, the preferred key type is now Symbol, defined in Key.h. This is both fast and cool: you can construct it from an int, and cast it to a strong. It also does type checking: a Symbol<Pose3,'x'> will not match a Symbol<Pose2,'x'>
4) minor: take a look at LieConfig.h: it help you avoid writing a lot of code bu automatically creating configs for a certain type. See e.g. Pose3Config.h. A "double" LieConfig is on the way - Thanks Richard and Manohar !
* Factors are now templated on the configuration type. Factor Graphs are now templated on the factor type and configuration type.
* LinearFactor is a factor on an FGConfig.
* LinearFactorGraph uses LinearFactor and FGConfig.
* NonLinearFactor is still templated on Config.
* NonLinearFactorGraph uses NonLinearFactors, but is still templated on Config.
* Tests and VSLAMFactor have been updated to reflect those changes.
(1) FactorGraph and NonlinearOptimizer now no longer have a .cpp file, but a -inl.h file as in [http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml Google's C++ Style Guide]. This means if you expect to instantiate one of the functions in a cpp file, you have to include the -inl.h file.
(1) getOrdering is now in FactorGraph, and the non-linear version does *not* take a config anymore.
Long version: I made this change because colamd works on the graph structure alone, and should not depend on the type of graph. Instead, because getOrdering happened to implemented in LinearFactorGraph first, the non-linear version converted to a linear factor graph (at the cost of an unnecessary linearization), and then threw all that away to call colamd. To implement this in a key-neutral way (a hidden agenda), i had to modify the keys_ type to a list, so a lot of changes resulted from that.
Frank Dellaert
Chris Beall
Manohar Paluri
Alex Cunningham
Richard Roberts