Viewpoint planning for automated 3D digitization using a low-cost mobile platform

Abstract

This paper presents a low-cost, simple automated mobile platform for 3D environmental digitization. Compared with other customized 3D digitization platforms, all parts in our platform are commercial off-the-shelf. In order to build a 3D model of a salient target, we present a new viewpoint planning method for fast 3D digitization. Within a predefined accuracy, our method can determine the minimum overlap between two consecutive scanning images to speed up the digitization process. This guarantees the next scanning image can be merged to the previous one properly. The results from both simulation and experiments show the effectiveness of our viewpoint planning method. Our tests of this mobile robot system demonstrate the feasibility of 3D digitization based on a low-cost platform.