Feature-Feature Matching For Object Retrieval in Point Clouds

Abstract: In this project, we implement a system for retrieving instances of objects from point clouds using feature based matching techniques. The target dataset of point clouds consists of approximately 80 full scans of office rooms over a period of one month. The raw clouds are reprocessed to remove regions which are unlikely to contain objects. Using locations determined by one of several possible interest point selection methods, one of a number of descriptors is extracted from the processed clouds. Descriptors from a target cloud are compared to those from a query object using a nearest neighbour approach. The nearest neighbours of each descriptor in the query cloud are used to vote for the position of the object in a 3D grid overlaid on the room cloud. We apply clustering in the voting space and rank the clusters according to the number of votes they contain. The centroid of each of the clusters is used to extract a region from the target cloud which, in the ideal case, corresponds to the query object. We perform an experimental evaluation of the system using various parameter settings in order to investigate factors affecting the usability of the system, and the efficacy of the system in retrieving correct objects. In the best case, we retrieve approximately 50% of the matching objects in the dataset. In the worst case, we retrieve only 10%. We find that the best approach is to use a uniform sampling over the room clouds, and to use a descriptor which factors in both colour and shape information to describe points.