How many photos does a usable 3-D reconstruction need?
research/sensing-recon
How many photos does a usable 3-D reconstruction need? On a synthetic object with known cameras, 12 views on a full orbit triangulate every feature, 8 views 89% and 4 or fewer at most 13%; per-point error then depends on pixel noise and pose error, not view count. Triangulation stage only (synthetic).
What it found
Synthetic bumpy-ellipsoid object, 800 features, pinhole cameras on an orbit with known poses and linear (DLT) triangulation. On a full orbit 12 views reconstruct every feature, 8 views 89%, 6 views 59% and 4 or fewer at most 13%, because a point must be seen by two cameras. Once triangulated, error is about 0.0028 object radii per pixel of image noise, a 1° pose error does the damage of about 2 px, and a narrow baseline (5° span) raises error about 7× against a 40° span. Triangulation stage only: matches and poses are given, there is no occlusion, mesh or splat, and no real images.
A figure from its own output
Paper, code and results
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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.