<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-47-2025</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Enhancing VINS with Smart Feature Grading: Overcoming Cautious and Excessive Removal of Dynamic Features for Robust Urban Localization</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Adham</surname>
<given-names>Mahmoud</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Wu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mansour</surname>
<given-names>Ahmed</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9840-7030</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mahmoud</surname>
<given-names>Mostafa</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Yaxin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), The Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI), Hong Kong S.A.R., China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Cairo University, the Public Works Department, Faculty of Engineering, Giza, Egypt</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>28</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-G-2025</volume>
<fpage>47</fpage>
<lpage>54</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Mahmoud Adham et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/47/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-47-2025.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/47/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-47-2025.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/47/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-47-2025.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-G-2025/47/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-G-2025-47-2025.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Visual-inertial navigation systems (VINS) have emerged as a popular and effective solution for autonomous navigation due to their accuracy, real-time capabilities, and cost-effectiveness. However, while traditional VINS methods excel in static environments with well-distributed features, they struggle in highly dynamic urban environments where moving objects distort feature tracking, leading to pose estimation errors and localization inaccuracies. Recent approaches, such as image geometric constraints-based methods, aim to address these challenges but are limited when moving objects dominate the scene. Deep learning (DL)-based methods, which directly remove potential dynamic objects, often degrade accuracy in low-texture scenes and overlook the resulting uneven feature distribution, further impacting state estimation. To address these issues, we propose a novel VINS method that combines visual and inertial information with a smart feature grading module to overcome cautious and excessive dynamic feature removal, effectively handling the complexities of dominant and ambiguous dynamic objects beyond the limitations of traditional DL and vision-based methods. The method&apos;s performance shows effective identification and filtering of dynamic features while preserving static ones. Tests carried out on multiple datasets in urban dynamic environments highlight the method&apos;s enhanced accuracy and robustness.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="8"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>