Reliable updates of the transformation in the iterative closest point algorithm

The update of the rigid body transformation in the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm is considered. The ICP algorithm is used to solve surface registration problems where a rigid body transformation is to be found for fitting a set of data points to a given surface. Two regions for constraining the update of the rigid body transformation in its parameter space to make it reliable are introduced. One of these regions gives a monotone convergence with respect to the value of the mean square error and the other region gives an upper bound for this value. Point-to-plane distance minimization is then used to obtain the update of the transformation such that it satisfies the used constraint.