3D free-form object recognition in range images using local surface patches

This paper introduces an integrated local surface descriptor for surface representation and object recognition. A local surface descriptor is defined by a centroid, its surface type and 2D histogram. The 2D histogram consists of shape indexes, calculated from principal curvatures, and angles between the normal of reference point and that of its neighbors. Instead of calculating local surface descriptors for all the 3D surface points, we only calculate them for feature points, which are areas with large shape variation. Furthermore, in order to speed up the search process and deal with a large set of objects, model local surface patches are indexed into a hash table. Given a set of test local surface patches, we cast votes for models containing similar surface descriptors. Potential corresponding local surface patches and candidate models are hypothesized. Verification is performed by aligning models with scenes for the most likely models. Experimental results with real range data are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.