  The present work proposes a solution to the challenging problem of
registering two partial point sets of the same object with very limited
overlap. We leverage the fact that most objects found in man-made environments
contain a plane of symmetry. By reflecting the points of each set with respect
to the plane of symmetry, we can largely increase the overlap between the sets
and therefore boost the registration process. However, prior knowledge about
the plane of symmetry is generally unavailable or at least very hard to find,
especially with limited partial views, and finding this plane could strongly
benefit from a prior alignment of the partial point sets. We solve this
chicken-and-egg problem by jointly optimizing the relative pose and symmetry
plane parameters, and notably do so under global optimality by employing the
branch-and-bound (BnB) paradigm. Our results demonstrate a great improvement
over the current state-of-the-art in globally optimal point set registration
for common objects. We furthermore show an interesting application of our
method to dense 3D reconstruction of scenes with repetitive objects.
