I've noticed a really fun trend at the companies I've worked with. 10-15 years ago stereo vision was pretty reliable for feature tracking or dense navigation. Pose graph methods were stellar. A new grad student could make a pretty decent pipeline themselves. Then detectors became AI/CNN driven and stereo tracking became really good. Like radar good. Again, couple knowledgeable grad students, hard studiers, or PhD could do magic.
But then it all crashed. Somewhere along the line we lost something. My last job (not Shield), I watched the estimates for a truck jump in and out of existence at 50m range with 2m baseline. Its orientation flickered 30degrees or more. But because they had used an EKF somewhere, they claimed it was the best they could do and anything else was inventing signal. I haven't dug into state estimation in the last five years but it's not gotten better if this is what new grads believe.
But then it all crashed. Somewhere along the line we lost something. My last job (not Shield), I watched the estimates for a truck jump in and out of existence at 50m range with 2m baseline. Its orientation flickered 30degrees or more. But because they had used an EKF somewhere, they claimed it was the best they could do and anything else was inventing signal. I haven't dug into state estimation in the last five years but it's not gotten better if this is what new grads believe.