3-D object modeling from 2-D occluding contour correspondences by opti-acoustic stereo imaging

•3-D object modeling from occluding contours from multi-modal optical/sonar stereo.•Imaging same contour by zero-baseline stereo, circumventing dense feature matching.•Improve reconstruction accuracy from 3-D contour positions and orientations.•Identifying degenerate configurations and simple misalignment rectification.•Flexibility to use navigation data or a few feature tracks for 3-D trajectory estimation. Utilizing in situ measurements to build 3-D volumetric object models under variety of turbidity conditions is highly desirable for marine sciences. To address the ineffectiveness of feature-based structure from motion and stereo methods under poor visibility, we explore a multi-modal stereo imaging technique that utilizes coincident optical and forward-scan sonar cameras, a so-called opti-acoustic stereo imaging system. The challenges of establishing dense feature correspondences in either opti-acoustic or low-contrast optical stereo images are avoided, by employing 2-D occluding contour correspondences, namely, the images of 3-D object occluding rims. Collecting opti-acoustic stereo pairs while circling an object, matching 2-D apparent contours in optical and sonar views to construct the 3-D occluding rim, and computing the stereo rig trajectory by opti-acoustic bundle adjustment, we generate registered samples of 3-D surface in a reference coordinate system. A surface interpolation gives the 3-D object model. In addition to the key advantage of utilizing range measurements from sonar, the proposed paradigm requires no assumption about local surface curvature as traditionally made in 3-D shape reconstruction from occluding contours. The reconstruction accuracy is improved by computing both the 3-D positions and local surface normals of sampled contours. We also present (1) a simple calibration method to estimate and correct for small discrepancy from the desired relative stereo pose; (2) an analytical analysis of the degenerate configuration that enables special treatment in mapping (tall) elongated objects with dominantly vertical edges. We demonstrate the performance of our method based on the 3-D surface rendering of certain objects, imaged by an underwater opti-acoustic stereo system