Automatic generation and detection of highly reliable fiducial markers under occlusion

• Published in: Pattern recognition Vol. 47; no. 6; pp. 2280 - 2292
• Main Authors: Garrido-Jurado, S., Muñoz-Salinas, R., Madrid-Cuevas, F.J., Marín-Jiménez, M.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Augmented reality; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer vision; Dictionaries; Exact sciences and technology; Fiducial marker; Image processing; Information, signal and communications theory; Markers; Occlusion; Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Proposals; Robots; Segmentation; Signal processing; Telecommunications and information theory; Computer vision; Fiducial marker; Augmented reality; Dictionaries; State of the art; Image processing; Algorithm; Color image; Robotics; Image segmentation; False negative; Automatic measurement; Automatic generation; Position measurement; Localization; Robot
• ISSN: 0031-3203; 1873-5142
• DOI: 10.1016/j.patcog.2014.01.005

This paper presents a fiducial marker system specially appropriated for camera pose estimation in applications such as augmented reality and robot localization. Three main contributions are presented. First, we propose an algorithm for generating configurable marker dictionaries (in size and number of bits) following a criterion to maximize the inter-marker distance and the number of bit transitions. In the process, we derive the maximum theoretical inter-marker distance that dictionaries of square binary markers can have. Second, a method for automatically detecting the markers and correcting possible errors is proposed. Third, a solution to the occlusion problem in augmented reality applications is shown. To that aim, multiple markers are combined with an occlusion mask calculated by color segmentation. The experiments conducted show that our proposal obtains dictionaries with higher inter-marker distances and lower false negative rates than state-of-the-art systems, and provides an effective solution to the occlusion problem. •We propose an algorithm for generating configurable marker dictionaries.•We derive the maximum theoretical inter-marker distance.•A method for automatically detecting the markers and correcting errors is proposed.•A solution to the occlusion problem in augmented reality applications is shown.