Fast Range Image Segmentation and Smoothing Using Approximate Surface Reconstruction and Region Growing

Decomposing sensory measurements into relevant parts is a fundamental prerequisite for solving complex tasks, e.g., in the field of mobile manipulation in domestic environments. In this paper, we present a fast approach to surface reconstruction in range images by means of approximate polygonal meshing. The obtained local surface information and neighborhoods are then used to 1) smooth the underlying measurements, and 2) segment the image into planar regions and other geometric primitives. An evaluation using publicly available data sets shows that our approach does not rank behind state-of-the-art algorithms while allowing to process range images at high frame rates.