Tree-based search of the next best view/state for three-dimensional object reconstruction

Three-dimensional models from real objects have many applications in robotics. To automatically build a three-dimensional model from an object, it is essential to determine where to place the range sensor in order to completely observe the object. However, the view (position and orientation) of the sensor is not sufficient, given that its corresponding robot state needs to be calculated. Additionally, a collision-free trajectory to reach that state is required. In this article, we directly find the state of the robot whose corresponding sensor view observes the object. This method does not require to calculate the inverse kinematics of the robot. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed method guides the search with a tree structure based on a rapidly exploring random tree overcoming previous sampling techniques. In addition, we propose an information metric that improves the reconstruction performance of previous information metrics.