The ICP algorithm and its derivatives is the de facto standard for registration of 3D range-finder scans today. This paper presents a quantitative comparison between ICP and 3D NDT, a novel approach based on the normal distributions transform. The new method ad- dresses two of the main problems of ICP: the fact that it does not make use of the local surface shape and the computationally demanding nearest-neighbour search. The results show that 3D NDT produces accurate results much faster, though it is more sensitive to error in the initial pose estimate.