Viewpoint variation in the noise sensitivity of pose estimation

The paper presents an analysis of the stability of pose estimation. The investigated pose estimation technique is based on orientations of three edge segments and provides the rotation part of object pose. The specific emphasis of the analysis is on determining how the stability varies with view point relative to an object. The stability investigation propagates the uncertainty in edge segment orientations to the resulting effect on the pose parameters. It is shown that there is a very strong variation in noise sensitivity over the range of viewpoints and that exactly what viewpoints offer highest robustness towards noise can be determined in advance. Experiments on real images verify the theoretical results and show that, dependent on viewpoint, pose parameter variance varies from 0.05 to 20 (degrees squared).