Development of 3-D robot vision sensor with fiber grating: Fusion of 2-D intensity image and discrete range image

The authors describe a three-dimensional vision sensor which fuses discrete range data obtained by a FG (fiber grating) vision sensor and a 2-D intensity image obtained by a CCD (charge coupled device) camera of the sensor. The range image obtained by the sensor is coarsely sampled data. Therefore, one cannot recognize a 3-D object accurately. On the other hand, though one can get features (such as outlines, edge lines, and vertices) from an intensity image, one cannot determine their locations on 3-D space without some restrictions. To solve these problems, the authors propose a method that can recognize a 3-D object by fusing both information obtained from a discrete range image and an abstracted 2-D image.