Active viewpoint planning for model construction

This paper presents a novel method of viewpoint planning for incrementally building the models of unknown objects or environments by an active vision system. The proposed method is based on the model of trend surface, which is the regional feature of a surface for describing the global tendency of change. A new mathematical model is developed for predicting the unknown area of the object surface. A unique surface model is established by analyzing the surface curvature. Furthermore, a criterion is defined to determine the exploration direction. The algorithm is developed for determining the next view pose, which satisfies the placement constraints such as resolution, focus, and field of view. Finally, implementation of the method is carried out to verify the proposed method.