A curvature-based approach to terrain recognition

The authors describe an algorithm which uses a Gaussian and mean curvature profile for extracting special points on terrain and then use these points for recognition of particular regions of the terrain. The Gaussian and mean curvatures are chosen because they are invariant under rotation and translation. In the Gaussian and mean curvature image, the points of maximum and minimum curvature are extracted and used for matching. The stability of the position of those points in the presence of noise and with resampling is investigated. The input for this algorithm consists of 3-D digital terrain data. Curvature values are calculated from the data by fitting a quadratic surface over a square window and calculating directional derivatives of this surface. A method of surface fitting which is invariant to coordinate system transformation is suggested and implemented. The algorithm is tested with and without the presence of noise, and its performance is described