Toward automatic reconstruction of 3D environment with an active binocular head

This paper presents a new automatic approach to reconstructing a model for the 3D environment by use of an active binocular head (the IIS head). To efficiently store and access the depth estimates, we propose the use of the inverse polar octree. The depth estimates are computed by using the asymptotic Bayesian estimation method. The path of the local motion required by the asymptotic Bayesian method is determined online automatically to reduce the ambiguity of stereo matching. Some rules for checking the consistency between the new observation and the previous observations have been developed. Our experimental results have shown that the proposed approach is very promising for automatic generation of 3D models which can be used for rendering a 3D scene in a virtual reality system.