  This paper introduces a new dual monocular visualinertial odometry (dual-VIO)
strategy for a mobile manipulator operating under dynamic locomotion, i.e.
coordinated movement involving both the base platform and the manipulator arm.
Our approach has been motivated by challenges arising from inaccurate
estimation due to coupled excitation when the mobile manipulator is engaged in
dynamic locomotion in cluttered environments. The technique maintains two
independent monocular VIO modules, with one at the mobile base and the other at
the end-effector (EE), which are tightly coupled at the low level of the factor
graph. The proposed method treats each monocular VIO with respect to each other
as a positional anchor through arm-kinematics. These anchor points provide a
soft geometric constraint during the VIO pose optimization. This allows us to
stabilize both estimators in case of instability of one estimator in highly
dynamic locomotions. The performance of our approach has been demonstrated
through extensive experimental testing with a mobile manipulator tested in
comparison to running dual VINS-Mono in parallel. We envision that our method
can also provide a foundation towards active-SLAM (ASLAM) with a new
perspective on multi-VIO fusion and system redundancy.
