From the task of automatically reconstructing real world scenes using range images, the problem of planning the image acquisition
arises. Although solutions for small objects in known environments are already available, these approaches lack scalability
to large scenes and to a high number of degrees of freedom. In this paper, we present a new planning algorithm for initially
unknown, large indoor environments. Using a surface representation of seen and unseen parts of the environment, we propose
a method based on the analysis of occlusions. In addition to previous approaches, we take into account both a quality criterion
and the cost of the next acquisition. Results are shown for two large indoor scenes — an artificial scene and a real world
room — with numerous self occlusions.
Keywords view planning - active vision - range image fusion - 3d reconstruction - modelling from reality - autonomous exploration
The work presented here was done while Konrad Klein was with the EC-Joint Research Centre, funded by the European Commission’s
TMR network “CAMERA”, contract number ERBFM-RXCT970127.