Three-dimensional mapping by direct estimation of a small motion using range images and optical flow of color images

Abstract

In this paper, a method that directly estimates motion parameters of a range image sensor using range images and optical flow of color images is proposed. Linear equations for motion parameters are introduced by utilizing optical flow. A three-dimensional (3D) map is constructed by registration of range images between frames using the estimated motion parameters. Experiments to construct a 3D map using the proposed method are given. In the experiments, the accuracy of the constructed map and the time of estimating the motion parameters are evaluated. It is shown that the proposed method can construct an accurate 3D map for several scenes and estimation time of motion parameters is less than 30 ms.