The Trimmed Iterative Closest Point algorithm

The problem of geometric alignment of two roughly preregistered, partially overlapping, rigid, noisy 3D point sets is considered. A new natural and simple, robustified extension of the popular Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm (Besl and McKay, 1992) is presented, called the Trimmed ICP (TrICP). The new algorithm is based on the consistent use of the least trimmed squares (LTS) approach in all phases of the operation. Convergence is proved and an efficient implementation is discussed. TrICP is fast, applicable to overlaps under 50%, robust to erroneous measurements and shape defects, and has easy-to-set parameters. ICP is a special case of TrICP when the overlap parameter is 100%. Results of testing the new algorithm are shown.