HexVIO is a research approach to making visual-inertial odometry (VIO) more efficient by using the Hexagon DSP, a co-processor described in the paper as present in many modern smartphones and XR devices. Its design offloads the system’s visual frontend to the DSP while keeping the backend on the main CPU.
The paper reports that its DSP-optimized implementation reduces power consumption and latency compared with CPU-only execution. On a commodity smartphone, HexVIO demonstrated a 67% reduction in power consumption and an 86% increase in throughput.
For mobile users, the practical appeal is potential endurance for tracking tasks that need to run continuously. HexVIO reports long-term, real-time tracking at 30 fps and 0.83 W; on the testing device, that power figure corresponds to approximately 18 hours of tracking. Those results are specific to the reported test and do not establish battery life for other phones or everyday apps.
The findings point to commodity DSPs as a possible route to all-day visual-inertial tracking in mobile devices and robotics. They are a systems-level result, not evidence that a consumer-facing feature is already available. The reported findings concern power and performance; they do not provide a basis here for claims about data handling or privacy.
