Patent attributes
An artificial reality system is configured to more accurately and efficiently construct a 3D virtual representation of a real-world environment from a set of 2D images. The system identifies points and/or lines within the images that define a plane along an orientation and then performs a planar sweep along a perpendicular path to identify surfaces in which the plane intersects with multiple points. Points that appear to be in the same plane are “collapsed” into a cohesive plane to conserve processing power by estimating and/or storing parameters for the cohesive plane, rather than all of the individual 3D points. In this way, the system also “averages out” random variation in the planar surface that would otherwise result from random noise in the estimation of the individual 3D points. The system may then generate a 3D map from a constrained alignment of all of the identified planes.