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Vol: 57(71) No: 4 / December 2012 

Range Image Smoothing and Viewpoint Normalized Images for Feature Based Landmark Detection
Viktor Kovács
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Magyar Tudósok krt. 2., 1117 Budapest, Hungary, phone: (+36 1) 463-2857, e-mail: kovacsv@aut.bme.hu
Gábor Tevesz
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Magyar Tudósok krt. 2., 1117 Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: tevesz@aut.bme.hu


Keywords: image feature extraction, landmark detection, viewpoint invariance, SLAM

Abstract
Feature extraction algorithms are used to preprocess, extract relevant information from images. Features consist of two parts: keypoint and feature descriptor. Advanced feature extraction algorithms (such as SIFT and SURF) offer robust keypoint detection and distinctive descriptor generation. Slight changes in brightness, contrast, translation, rotation, scale or viewpoint does not affect feature matching abilities. Thus these algorithms are widely used in machine vision for mobile robotics. As a robot moves in its environment, perceived images suffer from many distortions (viewpoint brightness, rotation, scale, translation etc. changes) so landmark detection algorithms must be robust and tolerate these changes. Viewpoint invariance is especially important in SLAM applications. In this paper we evaluate a method to improve viewpoint invariance based on intensity images supplemented by additional information provided by range images. We also show a method to smooth low depth resolution range images in order to detect planes needed for the previous algorithm. Range images are smoothed by locally fitting surfaces in range images using pixel data near borders caused by quantization. In smooth range images local normals are estimated and a histogram is generated. Based on the peaks planar surfaces are identified. Intensity image data is viewpoint normalized and features are extracted. We compare feature point matching with and without the improvement.

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