Recovering Articulated Object Models from 3D Range Data
D. Anguelov, D. Koller, H.-C. Pang, P. Srinivasan, S. Thrun. [UAI 2004]

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We describe an algorithm whose input is a set of meshes corresponding to different configurations of an articulated object. The algorithm automatically recovers a decomposition of the object into approximately rigid parts, the location of the parts in the different object instances, and the articulated object skeleton linking the parts.  Our algorithm first registers all the meshes using an unsupervised
non-rigid technique [the CC algorithm] . It then segments the meshes using a graphical model that captures the spatial contiguity of parts.  The segmentation is done using the EM algorithm, iterating between finding a decomposition of the object into rigid parts, and finding the location of the parts in the object instances.  Although the graphical model is densely connected, the object decomposition step can be performed optimally and efficiently, allowing us to identify a large number of object parts while avoiding local maxima. We demonstrate the algorithm on several real world datasets, including scans of human arms, wooden puppets and entire human bodies.

Paper:  [PDF - 0.3MB]
UAI Poster: [PPT file - 2 MB]
Video of the algorithm in action: [WMF format - 0.3MB]. You will need Windows Media Player to view this movie.

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