Fast 3D Reconstruction and Visualization for Explosive Ordinance Disposal for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (EOD for UGVs)

Principal Investigator:Jan-Michael Frahm
Funding Agency:The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences
Agency Number:69-200910

Abstract
We present a system for fast 3D reconstruction for the purpose of Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) for Unmanned Ground Vehicls (UGVs). In the first phase of operation, the UGV makes a circular reconnaisance pass, capturing high-resolution video of the object of interest from all angles. Camera poses are computed from matched image features, and a detailed 3D polygonal surface mesh is produced using a novel stereo approach, all within 120 seconds after the video is acquired. In the second phase of operation, the UGV returns to the object, and the system provides the operator a free-viewpoint virtual visualization of the object and the UGV, facilitating navigation of the vehicle and completion of the EOD task. This is made possible by localizing the vehicle with respect to the model using image features and internal odometry, which are fused together by a Kalman filter in real-time. The proposed system is capable of reconstructing details as small as 3 mm, such as wires and cables, and runs on a commodity PC with a high-end GPU.