Absolute orientation from uncertain point data: a unified approach

A general and flexible method for fusing and integrating different 2D and 3D measurements for pose estimation is proposed. The 2D measured data are viewed as 3D data with infinite uncertainty in a particular direction. This representation unifies the two categories of the absolute orientation problem into a single problem that varies only in the uncertainty values associated with the measurements. With this paradigm a uniform mathematical formulation of the problem is obtained, and different kinds of measurements that can be fused to obtain a better solution. The method, which is implemented using Kalman filtering, is robust and easily parallelizable.<>