Merging range images of arbitrarily shaped objects

Range data offer a direct way to produce shape descriptions of surfaces. Typically single range images have the form of a graph surface z=g(z,y) and thus suffer from occlusion. One can reduce this problem by taking several images from different locations and merging them together. The result is a real 3-D description of the object´s surface. In this paper we address several problems that result from the 2½-D to 3-D transition. We present an algorithm which is able to merge depth images of an arbitrary shaped object using a highly local approach. An explicit sensor error model is used to support the merging. A key feature of our algorithm is the ability to update its result by an additional new view. Thus, it is possible to gradually improve the surface description in regions of high noise