Automatic 3D modeling with multi-spectral textures and classical ICP-based approach: a comparison

Automatization of the registration of multiple scans acquired from terrestrial laser scanners represents a very actractive research field. The chance to automatically align several point clouds would help to reduce processing costs in terms of time and human resources needed and not less importantly it would allow even non specialist users to produce 3D models with good quality. Indeed in most cases, scan registration is still performed on the basis of ICP algorithm, a method which often tends to be time-consuming, increases the final cost of the 3D model and represents the major limit to the wide spreading of real object models. This paper presents the preliminary results of the comparison between two modeling approaches: the first one is an automatic system based on the Textured spin-images (TSI) concept, while the second relies on a classical ICP-based method, provided by commercial software. The TSI approach has been implemented on a new 3D modeling software (3D Everywhere Modeling Suite) developed by the Dept. of Information Engineering of the University of Padova and currently tested by Cirgeo.