A fast automatic method for registration of partially-overlapping range images

A popular approach for 3D registration of partially-overlapping range images is the ICP (iterative closest point) method and many of its variations. The major drawback of this type of iterative approaches is that they require a good initial estimate to guarantee that the correct solution can always be found. In this paper, we propose a new method, the RANSAC-based DARCES (data-aligned rigidity-constrained exhaustive search) method, which can solve the partially-overlapping 3D registration problem efficiently and reliably without any initial estimation. Another important characteristic of our method is that it requires no local features in the 3D data set. An extra characteristic is that, for the noiseless case, the basic algorithm of our DARCES method can guarantee that the solution it finds is the true one, due to its exhaustive-search nature. Even with the nature of exhaustive search, its time complexity can be shown to be relatively low. Experiments have demonstrated that our method is efficient and reliable for registering partially-overlapping range images