Object modeling by registration of multiple range images

The problem of creating a complete model of a physical object is studied. Although this may be possible using intensity images, the authors use range images which directly provide access to three-dimensional information. The first problem that needs to be solved is to find the transformation between the different views. Previous approaches have either assumed this transformation to be known (which is extremely difficult for a complete model) or computed it with feature matching (which is not accurate enough for integration. The authors propose an approach that works on range data directly and registers successive views with enough overlapping area to get an accurate transformation between views. This is performed by minimizing a functional that does not require point-to-point matches. Details are given of the registration method and modeling procedure, and they are illustrated on range images of complex objects.>