Automatic creation of architectural CAD models

Abstract

This paper describes the automatic creation of architectural C A D files from a sequence of images acquired b y a single camera mounted on a mobile robot. Segments with particular 3-D orientations are detected and tracked across several images using a matching algorithm. The 3 -0 position and orientation of the corresponding scene edges are reconstructed by 0 structure from motion algorithm. Next, an interpretation stage tries t o identify planar patches in the 3-D data. These patches are likely to correspond to walls, ceilings and floors in the scene. The resulting scene description is converted to an industry-standard C A D file format (DXF) so that data can be manipulated or displayed using conventional C A D programs. The goal of the entire system is to reduce or eliminate human intervention in the generation of C A D descriptions of existing buildings. This paper focuses on the latter stages of the C A D model generation, including planar patch identification.