An Evaluation and Ranking of Different Voting Schemes for Improved
  Visual Place Recognition
Maria Waheed Michael Milford Xiaojun Zhai Klaus McDonald-Maier Shoaib Ehsan
Visual Place Recognition has recently seen a surge of endeavours utilizing
different ensemble approaches to improve VPR performance. Ideas like
multi-process fusion or switching involve combining different VPR techniques
together, utilizing different strategies. One major aspect often common to many
of these strategies is voting. Voting is widely used in many ensemble methods,
so it is potentially a relevant subject to explore in terms of its application
and significance for improving VPR performance. This paper attempts to looks
into detail and analyze a variety of voting schemes to evaluate which voting
technique is optimal for an ensemble VPR set up. We take inspiration from a
variety of voting schemes that exist and are widely employed in other research
fields such as politics and sociology. The idea is inspired by an observation
that different voting methods result in different outcomes for the same type of
data and each voting scheme is utilized for specific cases in different
academic fields. Some of these voting schemes include Condorcet voting, Broda
Count and Plurality voting. Voting employed in any aspect requires that a fair
system be established, that outputs the best and most favourable results which
in our case would involve improving VPR performance. We evaluate some of these
voting techniques in a standardized testing of different VPR techniques, using
a variety of VPR data sets. We aim to determine whether a single optimal voting
scheme exists or, much like in other fields of research, the selection of a
voting technique is relative to its application and environment. We also aim to
propose a ranking of these different voting methods from best to worst
according to our results as this will allow for better selection of voting
schemes.