Autonomous scene description with range imagery

Abstract

This paper presents a program to produce object-centered 3-dimensional descriptions starting from point-wise 3D range data obtained by a light-stripe rangefinder. A careful geometrical analysis shows that contours which appear in light-stripe range images can be classified into eight types, each with different characteristics in occluding vs occluded and different camera/illuminator relationships. Starting with detecting these contours in the iconic range image, the descriptions are generated moving up the hierarchy of contour, surface, object, to scene. We use conical and cylindrical surfaces as primitives. In this process, we exploit the fact that coherent relatinships, such as symmetry, and being coaxial, which are present among lower-level elements in the hierarchy allow us to hypothesize upper-level elements. The resultant descriptions are used for matching and recognizing objects. The analysis program has been applied to complex scenes containing cups, pans, and toy shovels.