Active Visual Object Reconstruction using D-, E-, and T-Optimal Next Best Views

In visual 3-D reconstruction tasks with mobile cameras, one wishes to move the cameras so that they provide the views that lead to the best reconstruction result. When the camera motion is adapted during the reconstruction, the view of interest is the next best view for the current shape estimate. We present such a next best view planning approach for visual 3-D reconstruction. The reconstruction is based on a probabilistic state estimation with sensor actions. The next best view is determined by a metric of the state estimation´s uncertainty. We compare three metrics: D-optimality, which is based on the entropy and corresponds to the (D)eterminant of the covariance matrix of a Gaussian distribution, E-optimality, and T-optimality, which are based on (E)igenvalues or on the (T)race of this matrix, respectively. We show the validity of our approach with a simulation as well as real-world experiments, and compare reconstruction accuracy and computation time for the optimality criteria.