Interactive 3D modeling from multiple images using scene regularities

Due to the complexity of real scenes and the fragility of fully automated vision techniques, results from many automated modeling systems are disappointing. Automated techniques often require manual clean-up and postprocessing to segment the scene into coherent objects and surfaces, or to triangulate sparse point matches. They may also be required to enforce geometric constraints such as known orientations of surfaces. For instance, building interiors and exteriors provide vertical and horizontal lines and parallel and perpendicular planes. In this paper, we attack the 3D modeling problem from the other side: we specify some geometric knowledge ahead of time (e.g., known orientations of lines, co-planarity of points, initial scene segmentations), and use these constraints to guide our matching and reconstruction algorithms. We present two interactive (semi-automated) systems for recovering 3D models of large-scale environments from multiple images.