View interpolation with range data for navigation applications

With the rapid spread of high speed networks, applications such as virtual museums and virtual shopping are attracting strong attention. Such applications need techniques for showing various views of 3D objects specified by a viewer. Of the techniques already proposed, some are attractive in terms of image storage but have strong restrictions on the viewer´s path. In this paper we present a method employing a range finder which is getting common lately. By defining source data as a combination of color image data and distance data, we show a procedure for computing view images in two steps: mapping and projection. We demonstrate the validity of our method by simulation experiments, first without, and then with, measurement errors in the range data. Although our method requires distance measurement, we show that it has merits as regards image storage and the relative freedom with which viewers can specify their desired views, in addition to freedom in exhibition layout