Abstract

This paper examines the potential benefits of applying next best view planning to sequential 3D reconstruction from unordered im- age sequences. A standard sequential structure-and-motion pipeline is extended with active selection of the order in which cameras are resec- tioned. To this end, approximate covariance propagation is implemented throughout the system, providing running estimates of the uncertainties of the reconstruction, while also enhancing robustness and accuracy. Ex- periments show that the use of expensive global bundle adjustment can be reduced throughout the process, while the additional cost of propa- gation is essentially linear in the problem size.