A Learnable Viewpoint Evolution Method for Accurate Pose Estimation of Complex Assembled Product

Featured Application: This study can be applied for the camera pose estimation and appearance quality inspection of large-sized complex assembled products that require high reliability, adaptability, and accuracy simultaneously. Balancing adaptability, reliability, and accuracy in vision technology has always been a major bottleneck limiting its application in appearance assurance for complex objects in high-end equipment production. Data-driven deep learning shows robustness to feature diversity but is limited by interpretability and accuracy. The traditional vision scheme is reliable and can achieve high accuracy, but its adaptability is insufficient. The deeper reason is the lack of appropriate architecture and integration strategies between the learning paradigm and empirical design. To this end, a learnable viewpoint evolution algorithm for high-accuracy pose estimation of complex assembled products under free view is proposed. To alleviate the balance problem of exploration and optimization in estimation, shape-constrained virtual–real matching, evolvable feasible region, and specialized population migration and reproduction strategies are designed. Furthermore, a learnable evolution control mechanism is proposed, which integrates a guided model based on experience and is cyclic-trained with automatically generated effective trajectories to improve the evolution process. Compared to the (Formula presented.) mm of the state-of-the-art data-driven method and the (Formula presented.) mm of the classic strategy combination, the pose estimation error of complex assembled product in this study is (Formula presented.) mm, which proves the effectiveness of the proposed method. Meanwhile, through in-depth exploration, the robustness, parameter sensitivity, and adaptability to the virtual–real appearance variations are sequentially verified.