A Comparison of PMD-Cameras and Stereo-Vision for the Task of Surface Reconstruction using Patchlets

Recently real-time active 3D range cameras based on time-of-flight technology (PMD) have become available. Those cameras can be considered as a competing technique for stereo-vision based surface reconstruction. Since those systems directly yield accurate 3d measurements, they can be used for benchmarking vision based approaches, especially in highly dynamic environments. Therefore, a comparative study of the two approaches is relevant. In this work the achievable accuracy of the two techniques, PMD and stereo, is compared on the basis of patchlet estimation. As patchlet we define an oriented small planar 3d patch with associated surface normal. Leastsquares estimation schemes for estimating patchlets from PMD range images as well as from a pair of stereo images are derived. It is shown, how the achivable accuracy can be estimated for both systems. Experiments under optimal conditions for both systems are performed and the achievable accuracies are compared. It has been found that t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CVPR
• Authors: Christian Beder, Bogumil Bartczak, Reinhard Koch
• Keywords: Achievable Accuracy, Active 3D Range, Computer Vision, CVPR 2007, PMD Range Images