Uncertainty in object pose determination with three light-stripe range measurements

The pose (position and orientation) of a polyhedral object can be determined by using a set of simple light-stripe range sensors. Data from these sensors, however, inherently contains errors which result in pose uncertainty. Therefore, in addition to calculating the pose itself, it is often desirable to estimate how certain the pose determination is. This paper presents a method for estimating the uncertainty in determining the pose of an arbitrarily positioned object with three light-stripe range finders. We analyze the perturbation of a least squares fit of sensed 3D segments to object faces, and obtain a relationship between the sensing error and the object pose error. Experiments demonstrate that the method provides the estimate of accuracy in pose determination. >