Accurate Motion Estimation and High-Precision 3D Reconstruction by Sensor Fusion

The CCD camera and the 2D laser range finder are widely used for motion estimation and 3D reconstruction. With their own strengths and weaknesses, low-level fusion of these two sensors complements each other. We combine these two sensors to perform motion estimation and 3D reconstruction simultaneously and precisely. We develop a motion estimation scheme appropriate for this sensor system. In the proposed method, the motion between two frames is estimated using three points among the scan data, and refined by nonlinear optimization. We validate the accuracy of the proposed method using real images. The results show that the proposed system is a practical solution for motion estimation as well as for 3D reconstruction.