3D Hallway Modeling Using a Single Image

Real-time, low-resource corridor reconstruction using a single consumer grade RGB camera is a powerful tool for allowing a fast, inexpensive solution to indoor mobility of a visually impaired person or a robot. The perspective and known geometry of a corridor is used to extract the important features of the image and create a 3D model from a single image. Multiple 3D models can be combined to increase confidence and provide a global 3D model. This paper presents our results on 3D corridor modeling using single images. First a simple but effective 3D corridor modeling approach is introduced which makes very few assumptions of the camera information. Second, a perspective based Hough transform algorithm is proposed to detect vertical lines in order to determine the edges of the corridor. Finally, issues in real-time implementation on a smartphone are discussed. Experimental results are provided to validate the proposed approach. This work has the potential to also function in environments with properties analogous to corridors such as highways, sidewalks, city blocks, etc.