Robust 3D Plane Estimation for Autonomous Vehicle Applications

A novel plane estimation algorithm from 3D range data is presented. The proposed solution is based on the minimization of a nonlinear prediction error cost function inspired by the mathematical definition of Gibbs' entropy. The method has been experimentally tested and compared with a standard implementation of the RANSAC algorithm. Results suggest that the proposed approach has the potential of performing better in terms of precision and reliability while requiring a lower computational effort.