Jetson OpenCV SURF

Note about SIFT/SURF in the nonfree module: OpenCV4Tegra doesn't include the opencv_nonfree package (containing SIFT & SURF feature detectors) since those algorithms are patented by other companies and therefore anyone using opencv_nonfree is at risk of liability.

If you need something from the nonfree module, you have 2 options:

1. Analyze the public OpenCV source code then copy/paste the parts of the nonfree module that you want (eg: SURF feature detector) from OpenCV into your own project. You will have the CPU optimizations of OpenCV4Tegra for most of your code and will have the GPU module and will have the non-optimized patented code that you need from the nonfree package such as SURF. So this option gives full performance (for everything except the nonfree code) but is tedious.
2. Ignore OpenCV4Tegra, and instead, download & build public OpenCV (by following the instructions below for natively compiling the OpenCV library from source). You will still have the GPU module but not any CPU optimizations, but you won't need to spend time ripping out parts of the OpenCV non-free module code. So this option is easiest but produces slower code if you are running most of your code on CPU.

elinux.org/Jetson/Installing_OpenCV