Target-free automatic registration of point clouds

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel method that automatically registers colored 3D point cloud sets without using targets or any other manual alignment processes. For fully automated point cloud registration without targets or landmarks, our approach utilizes feature detection algorithms used in computer vision. A digital camera and a laser scanner is utilized and the sensor data is merged based on a kinematic solution. The proposed approach is to detect and extract common features not directly from a 3D point cloud but from digital images corresponding to the point clouds. The initial alignment is achieved by matching common SURF features from corresponding digital images. Further alignment is obtained using plane segmentation and matching from the 3D point clouds. The test outcomes show promising results in terms of registration accuracy and processing time.