A Multi-view Trinocular System for Automatic 3-d Object Modeling and Rendering

For several applications of close-range photogrammetry, there is a growing interest in systems that are able to automatically perform a 3-D reconstruction of objects from stereo correspondences on CCD camera views. For such applications, a full-3D reconstruction of the object is often very desirable. In fact, most automatic systems for 3-D reconstruction based on stereo matching can only reconstruct the front side of the imaged scene. In order to obtain a full-3D reconstruction, it is necessary to observe the scene from several significant viewpoints. Furthermore, an exact determination of position and orientation of the cameras for all considered viewpoints (camera-motion) becomes crucial. In this paper we present a low-cost, high-accuracy, full-3D reconstruction system based on a calibrated set of three standard-resolution CCD cameras. No special positioning devices are needed as the camera-motion is retrieved for each position of the trinocular system from stereo-matching of unconstrained fiducial marks.