Volumetrische und qualitätsbasierte Ansichtenplanung zur Automatisierung von 3D-Digitalisierungsprozessen mit Scannern zur Tiefenbilderfassung

The objective of this thesis is the development of an autonomous view planning system to be used with a scanning system for the complete three-dimensional (3D) capturing of physical objects. For this purpose, the scanner device is mounted onto a robot arm to enable full range movement of the scanner, independent from the movement of the robot. This thesis is part of the Cultural Heritage Project of the Fraunhofer Institute for Visual Computing, which is concerned with the development of inexpensive automated 3D-digitization of objects of cultural value. Given that many museums lack exhibition space for their numerous exhibits and that these museums are scattered around the world, the Cultural Heritage Project seeks to provide worldwide virtual access to these exhibits. The developed view planning system will be discussed and tested in the course of this thesis. The aim of a view planning system is to calculate positions and orientations of the scanner to ensure an automated 3D-scanning of the cultural object without an accidential contact between the object and the scanning robot in the context of prior unknown initial positioning of the object. The view planning system developed is following a volumetric approach and was derived from an analysis of existing techniques. The main component of the approach presented is the discretization of a pre-defined space in which the object is located. None of the existing techniques meet the project's requirements, which made significant amendments and changes to the existing approaches necessary. The resulting eclectic view planning system presented here is a novel way to allow for the calculation of the next-best view and putting emphasize on the collision avoidance at the same time. The system calculates multiple next-best views in one planning step that are executed by the scanning unit. The none-actuatable hardware, i.e. the robot is not controllable by software at the moment, made the development of a simulation framework necessary to deliver the proof-of-concept for the view planning system and to be able to test and optimize the software independent from the hardware. This simulation framework and the test results based on various 3D-models are presented and evaluated in the course of this thesis