The drift, if you are moving a mouse on a desk its a very localized, temporary movement difference you have to track - the moment you try to scale this up you'll amplify inaccuracies a lot.

Also if you pick up a mouse and place it at a different spot on a surface, the mouse won't be able to register what happened.

Whereas this research project actually accomplishes that, you place your camera anywhere on a previously scanned/mapped surface, the software will instantaneously tell where you are.

So the difference: a mouse only tracks movement by relative changes. This project maps a texture onto a globally known map and calculates an absolute location.

It has been done successfully in the past. All you need to do is add the appropriate lens to focus further away.

Here they used an optical flow sensor for obstacle avoidance in a canyon. The closer to one side you got the faster the terrain would pass by the sensor. Allowing the UAV to self correct.

See the last two pages: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

It's been used on hobby quadcopters for years by using a lens and IR leds for the lighting but it's only reliable at a certain height. DJI uses the same technique using a camera but GPS is more reliable and have a higher resolution once you reach a certain height.

A mouse sensor only performs dead reckoning, not global positioning.