A view planning method incorporating self-termination for automated surface measurement

Viewpoint planning plays an important role in automatic 3D model construction. The planning process desires not only the ability to automatically determine the next sensing position, but also the ability for self-termination. In this paper, we use the trend surface, which is the regional feature of a surface for describing the global tendency of change, to compute the next best view in two steps. The exploration direction is determined by analysing the surface curvature of the trend surface. The next view pose is obtained by imposing such constraints as resolution, focus and field of view. A self-termination criterion is proposed for judging the completion condition in the measurement and reconstruction process. The termination condition is derived based on changes in the volume obtained from the last two successive viewpoints. Experimental results show that the method is effective in practical implementation. © 2005 IOP Publishing Ltd.