Histogram of distances for local surface description

Abstract

3D object recognition is proven superior compared to its 2D counterpart with numerous implementations, making it a current research topic. Local based proposals specifically, although being quite accurate, they limit their performance on the stability of their local reference frame or axis (LRF/A) on which the descriptors are defined. Additionally, extra processing time is demanded to estimate the LRF for each local patch. We propose a 3D descriptor which overrides the necessity of a LRF/A reducing dramatically processing time needed. In addition robustness to high levels of noise and non-uniform subsampling is achieved. Our approach, namely Histogram of Distances is based on multiple L2-norm metrics of local patches providing a simple and fast to compute descriptor suitable for time-critical applications. Evaluation on both high and low quality popular point clouds showed its promising performance.