Consensus Skeleton for Non‐rigid Space‐time Registration

Abstract We introduce the notion of consensus skeletons for non‐rigid space‐time registration of a deforming shape. Instead of basing the registration on point features, which are local and sensitive to noise, we adopt the curve skeleton of the shape as a global and descriptive feature for the task. Our method uses no template and only assumes that the skeletal structure of the captured shape remains largely consistent over time. Such an assumption is generally weaker than those relying on large overlap of point features between successive frames, allowing for more sparse acquisition across time. Building our registration framework on top of the low‐dimensional skeleton‐time structure avoids heavy processing of dense point or volumetric data, while skeleton consensusization provides robust handling of incompatibilities between per‐frame skeletons. To register point clouds from all frames, we deform them by their skeletons, mirroring the skeleton registration process, to jump‐start a non‐rigid ICP. We present results for non‐rigid space‐time registration under sparse and noisy spatio‐temporal sampling, including cases where data was captured from only a single view.