An Approach to 3D Pose
Determination
Rakesh Mullick
Norberto F. Ezquerra
|
|
|
| |
Abstract
The orientation, or pose, of an object is a fundamental
property that helps to define the geometrical
relationship between the object and its environment.
In addition, knowledge of object orientation can also
facilitate interpretive and decision-making tasks in a
variety of practical domains, including industrial,
meteorological, and medical applications. Determining
object pose, however, remains an open research question
in the fields of graphics and visualization. This
article descibes a novel yet intuitively simple
approach, which we call topological goniometry, to
determine the pose of a three-dimensional object from
3D data. The topology of interest is that of two-sided
surfaces in a three-manifold, and includes objects
whose shapes are unaffected by elastic transformations.
Algorithmically, topological goniometry is composed of
the following major steps. The first analyzes the
global topology proximity of the desired pose axis.
Using this set of 3D points, the second step then
invokes a "3D Walk" algorithm that considers the local
topology to produce a generalized curve representing
an estimate of the object's axis of pose. The resultant
pose axis is thus not constrained to lie along a
straight line but can be a generalized 3D curve. The
methods are illustrated with a variety of synthetically
created models that exhibit duct-like shapes, and are
further tested by introducing noise as well as
deformations to these models. The approach is also
applied to a number of real discrete data obtained from
meterological and medical domains. The results suggest
that the approach is applicable to both real and
synthetic datasets and is shown to be robust,
computationally efficient, and applicable to a variety
of domains. The approach can incorporate context- or
application-dependent information about the object of
interest using a set of constraints that guide the
process of orientation determination. This article
describes the approach, its implementation, and the
results obtained with numerous applications.
ACM Transactions on Graphics
Vol. 15, No. 2, April 1996, Pages 99-120
|
|
|
|