A comparison of shape matching methods for contour based pose estimation

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze two conceptionally different approaches for shape matching: the well-known iterated closest point (ICP) algorithm and variational shape registration via level sets. For the latter, we suggest to use a numerical scheme which was introduced in the context of optic flow estimation. For the comparison, we focus on the application of shape matching in the context of pose estimation of 3-D objects by means of their silhouettes in stereo camera views. It turns out that both methods have their specific shortcomings. With the possibility of the pose estimation framework to combine correspondences from two different methods, we show that such a combination improves the stability and convergence behavior of the pose estimation algorithm.