Modeling planar surfaces using direct plane fitting

Abstract

Embodiments of the disclosed technology are directed to using pixel data from two or images of the same real-world region to determine the orientation of substantially planar surfaces in those images. The disclosed technology may be utilized to generate positions and/or orientations of planar surfaces based on multiple 2D images of the planar surface. Implementations can include modeling a planar surface, which can include capturing at least two images (from corresponding different, known positions), determining, from the images, regions that correspond to substantially the same portion of the real-world planar surface, computing a similarity metric for the two regions, and then determining the orientation of the planar surface based on maximizing the similarity metric over various different regions from the images. The described embodiments provide improvements in speed and accuracy compared to existing procedures and are able to find planar surfaces in both low-texture environments and occluded environments.