High-Precision 6DOF Pose Estimation via Global Phase Retrieval in Fringe Projection Profilometry for 3D Mapping

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-precision 6DOF pose estimation method for fringe projection profilometry that achieves sub-millimeter accuracy and robustness in large-scale 3D mapping, overcoming limitations of traditional ICP methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel global phase retrieval approach using a fixed calibrated projector and a PnP-style reprojection, enabling sampling-invariant, high-precision pose estimation without feature extraction.

Findings

Achieves sub-millimeter pose accuracy with quantified uncertainty.

Demonstrates robustness under aggressive subsampling and homogeneous surfaces.

Reduces error accumulation in ICP trajectory correction.

Abstract

Digital fringe projection (DFP) enables micrometer-level 3D reconstruction, yet extending it to large-scale mapping remains challenging because six-degree-of-freedom pose estimation often cannot match the reconstruction's precision. Conventional iterative closest point (ICP) registration becomes inefficient on multi-million-point clouds and typically relies on downsampling or feature-based selection, which can reduce local detail and degrade pose precision. Drift-correction methods improve long-term consistency but do not resolve sampling sensitivity in dense DFP point clouds.We propose a high-precision pose estimation method that augments a moving DFP system with a fixed, intrinsically calibrated global projector. Using the global projector's phase-derived pixel constraints and a PnP-style reprojection objective, the method estimates the DFP system pose in a fixed reference frame without relying on deterministic feature extraction, and we experimentally demonstrate sampling invariance under coordinate-preserving subsampling. Experiments demonstrate sub-millimeter pose accuracy against a reference with quantified uncertainty bounds, high repeatability under aggressive subsampling, robust operation on homogeneous surfaces and low-overlap views, and reduced error accumulation when used to correct ICP-based trajectories. The method extends DFP toward accurate 3D mapping in quasi-static scenarios such as inspection and metrology, with the trade-off of time-multiplexed acquisition for the additional projector measurements.