Digital acquisition of 3D objects is a process in which a computer model of a physical object is constructed. This process is extremely popular nowadays as the resulting computer models have many applications. The acquisition process can be decomposed into four stages which have to be repeated until a satisfying model is obtained. Those four stages are scanning, registration, integration and planning [1].
The planning stage is needed because an object cannot be modeled from a single scan. It is necessary to measure the object from various points of view to obtain a complete model.
Currently, there is no system that can automatically scan an unknown object. Hence, a highly trained operator is needed to control the scanning device. The operator must select poses for the scanner such that the number of scans required to completely scan the object is kept reasonably small.
We present a novel representation for the model: the Hierarchical Occupancy Grid (HOG). This representation can be used for the integration and planning stage of the 3D acquisition pipeline.