Determining Optimal Sensor Poses in 3-D Object Inspection

The Next Best View (NBV) in a 3-D object inspection task is a sensor pose which reveals an optimal amount of unknown information about the object under inspection. The goal of a NBV inspection system is to completely inspect an object in the fewest number of views. Our approach to complete this task is to study a volumetric representation of the model after each new view is obtained. Since the volumetric model consists of known and unknown information, we want to nd the viewpoint from which the largest amount of unknown data can be acquired. The NBV algorithm is integrated into a system that acquires synthetic range data from a computer object model, calculates new viewpoints according to an objective function, and constructs a complete volumetric model of the object under inspection. The NBV algorithm is described in depth and experimental results are given.