<title>Surface reconstruction from misregistered data</title>

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for simultaneous registration and surface fitting, using multiple sets of 3d points. Our motivating application is the automatic construction of CAD models from 3d surface measurements of physical objects. A wide variety of technologies are currently used to measure 3d shape [1] , and our method is applicable to the data collected by many of them. However, to simplify the discussion, we will describe the problem in terms of an idealized laser range scanner. This idealized laser range scanner captures the shape of a physical object as a set of range images. Each range image is a sample of 3d locations from those parts of the surface of the object which are visible from a single scanner viewpoint. Although single range images are adequate for some applications, in general, to model the entire surface, it is necessary to collect range images from multiple viewpoints. At some point in the processing, each range image is a set of 3d points measured relative to the corresponding scanner viewpoint. To get consistent 3d data for the entire surface of the object, the range images then need to be regisiered into a common 3d coordinate system.