PWR-Align: Leveraging Part-Whole Relationships for Part-wise Rigid Point Cloud Registration in Mixed Reality Applications

Abstract

We present an efficient and robust point cloud registration (PCR) workflow for part-wise rigid point cloud alignment using the Microsoft HoloLens 2. Point Cloud Registration (PCR) is an important problem in Augmented and Mixed Reality use cases, and we present a study for a special class of non-rigid transformations. Many commonly encountered objects are composed of rigid parts that move relative to one another about joints resulting in non-rigid deformation of the whole object such as robots with manipulators, and machines with hinges. The workflow presented allows us to register the point cloud with various configurations of the point cloud.