<title>Stereo-based registration of ladar and color imagery</title>

Abstract

A major problem in the creation of multi-sensor interfaces for tele-robotics is the development of method for combining various data sources into one coherent world model for examination by the operator. However, if the images acquired from different sensing modalities can be registered with LADAR range images, texture mapping can be employed for sensor integration. Presented in this paper is a novel stereo-based method for registering color and LIDAR images acquired from externally uncalibrated sensors for use in a visualization system as described above. In our approach, corresponding features are first extracted from LADAR intensity/color image pairs. Since the computation of Euclidean range using stereoscopic techniques depends on knowledge of the relative sensor orientation, a downhill simplex algorithm is iteratively applied to minimize the sum-squared-error between the stereo and LADAR range estimates of the matched points with respect to the system's relative rotation and translation parameters. Once the system's epipolar geometry has been estimated in this manner, the LADAR range data is employed to re-project the color image to the viewpoint of the scanner for use as a texture map.