Systems and methods for pose estimation via radial voting based keypoint localization

Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed that facilitate object pose determination via keypoint detection. A machine learning algorithm is employed to facilitate voting-based estimation of the locations of at least three keypoints. In some example embodiments, the machine learning algorithm is trained, based on reference intensity-depth images of an object, to determine a radial distance between a keypoint and a 3D scene location associated with each pixel. At inference, the algorithm is employed to process an intensity-depth image to determine radial distance estimates for each pixel, and these radial distances are employed to increment an accumulator space, such that a sphere is generated in the accumulator space for each pixel, centered on the 3D scene location, and a keypoint location is determined by a peak in the accumulator space, with multiple keypoints enabling pose determination. The methods are adapted to other imaging modalities, including non-depth images and point cloud datasets.