Interactive registration method for 3D data fusion

Commercial depth sensors represent an opportunity for automation of certain 3D production and analysis tasks. One way to overcome some of their inherent limitations is by capturing the same scene with several depth sensors and merging their data, i.e. by performing 3D data fusion, which requires the registration of point clouds from different sensors. We propose a new interactive, fast and user-friendly method for depth sensor registration. We replace the traditional checkerboard pattern used to extract key points in the scene by a finger detector. This provides a main advantage: the method is easier to use and does not require external objects, while the elapsed time and the registration error are similar to those obtained through the classical method. We test the proposed approach with an interactive hand tracking application, improved to use more than a single sensor, and we show the increase in detection area by more than 70%.