Patent ID: 8532368

Claim:
A method of producing a three-dimensional (3D) model of an environment, comprising the steps of: a) acquiring a first and second plurality of successive stereo images of an environment from at least one of a plurality of stereo cameras which are moving with respect to the environment, the at least one stereo camera having at least two individual image capture means where there is an overlap between images captured by said at least two individual image capture means; b) for each image of said first plurality of successive stereo images, detecting features in the stereo images and computing a 3D position and descriptor for each detected feature, and storing said 3D position and said descriptor as a 3D feature in a database; c) for each image of said first plurality of successive stereo images, computing relative motion of the at least one stereo camera with respect to the environment by matching the detected features in the stereo images with said 3D features stored in the database using descriptors of said 3D features; d) for each image of said second plurality of successive stereo images, computing dense 3D data sets, representative of the environment from the at least one or another of said plurality of stereo cameras; e) for each image of said second plurality of successive stereo images, transforming the computed dense 3D data from step d) into a selected coordinate frame of reference using the computed relative motion from step c) to give transformed dense 3D data in the selected coordinate frame of reference; and f) storing the transformed dense 3D data for each image of said second plurality of successive stereo images and producing a 3D model of the environment from the stored transformed dense 3D data.