A new correspondenceless geometric algorithm for motion estimation from range images

A number of techniques for motion estimation from range images have been proposed over the past decade. A feature of existing techniques is that they do not explicitly use distance and angle information as rigid constraints to estimation. We have investigated the implications of this to the performance of algorithms and, in this paper, we propose a new correspondenceless algorithm for motion estimation from range images making full use of rigid constraints and projection information. The algorithm provides a closed form solution to all parameters of interest based on geometrical properties of correspondence vectors that have been synthesised into a single coordinate frame. For a comparative study of performance, we also implemented another correspondenceless motion estimation algorithm based on the eigenstructure analysis of the scatter matrix. Experimental results based on both synthetic and real images show that the proposed algorithm is accurate and robust and that it compares favourably with the scatter matrix algorithm