A Novel Approach to the Extraction of Key Points From 3-D Rigid Point Cloud Using 2-D Images Transformation

Most traditional methods for extracting key points from the 3D point cloud are based on the geometric features of points and they pose problems such as low accuracy. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a novel approach based on 2D image mapping, making it able to achieve highly accurate localization of key points. Specifically, it works as follows: input images are first selected for Harris corner detection; the three pairs of marker points of the images and the point cloud are then selected to calculate the transformation matrix T between them; next, the image key points are mapped onto the three-dimensional points through the transformation matrix T, for which the extraction of key points is achieved. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to greatly improve the extraction accuracy of key points in comparison with traditional algorithms.