A review of edge-based 3D tracking of rigid objects

Three-dimensional (3D) tracking of rigid objects plays a very important role in many areas such as augmented reality, computer vision, and robotics. Numerous works have been done to pursue more stable, faster, and more accurate 3D tracking. Among various tracking methods, edge-based 3D tracking has been widely used owing to its many advantages. Furthermore, edge-based methods can be mainly divided into two categories, methods without and those with explicit edges, depending on whether explicit edges need to be extracted. Based on this, representative methods in both categories are introduced, analyzed, and compared in this paper. Finally, some suggestions on the choice of methods in different application scenarios and research directions in the future are given.