In this paper we consider the problem of computing the 3D shape of an unknown, arbitrarily-shaped scene from multiple photographs taken at known but arbitrarilydistributed viewpoints. By studying the equivalence class of all 3D shapes that reproduce the input photographs, we prove the existence of a special member of this class, the photo hull, that (1) can be computed directly from photographs of the scene, and (2) subsumes all other members of this class. We then give a provably-correct algorithm, called Space Carving, for computing this shape and present experimental results on complex real-world scenes. The approach is designed to (1) build photorealistic shapes that accurately model scene appearance from a wide range of viewpoints, and (2) account for the complex interactions between occlusion, parallax, shading, and their effects on arbitrary views of a 3D scene. 1.

An efficient algorithmic solution to the classical five-point relative pose problem is presented. The problem is to find the possible solutions for relative camera pose between two calibrated views given five corresponding points. The algorithm consists of computing the coefficients of a tenth degree polynomial in closed form and subsequently finding its roots. It is the first algorithm well suited for numerical implementation that also corresponds to the inherent complexity of the problem. We investigate the numerical precision of the algorithm. We also study its performance under noise in minimal as well as over-determined cases. The performance is compared to that of the well known 8 and 7-point methods and a 6-point scheme. The algorithm is used in a robust hypothesize-and-test framework to estimate structure and motion in real-time with low delay. The real-time system uses solely visual input and has been demonstrated at major conferences.

Abstract—We present a real-time algorithm which can recover the 3D trajectory of a monocular camera, moving rapidly through a previously unknown scene. Our system, which we dub MonoSLAM, is the first successful application of the SLAM methodology from mobile robotics to the “pure vision ” domain of a single uncontrolled camera, achieving real time but drift-free performance inaccessible to Structure from Motion approaches. The core of the approach is the online creation of a sparse but persistent map of natural landmarks within a probabilistic framework. Our key novel contributions include an active approach to mapping and measurement, the use of a general motion model for smooth camera movement, and solutions for monocular feature initialization and feature orientation estimation. Together, these add up to an extremely efficient and robust algorithm which runs at 30 Hz with standard PC and camera hardware. This work extends the range of robotic systems in which SLAM can be usefully applied, but also opens up new areas. We present applications of MonoSLAM to real-time 3D localization and mapping for a high-performance full-size humanoid robot and live augmented reality with a hand-held camera. Index Terms—Autonomous vehicles, 3D/stereo scene analysis, tracking. 1

Abstract—We present a new parametrization for point features within monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) that permits efficient and accurate representation of uncertainty during undelayed initialization and beyond, all within the standard extended Kalman filter (EKF). The key concept is direct parametrization of the inverse depth of features relative to the camera locations from which they were first viewed, which produces measurement equations with a high degree of

We present blue-c, a new immersive projection and 3D video acquisition environment for virtual design and collaboration. It combines simultaneous acquisition of multiple live video streams with advanced 3D projection technology in a CAVE^TM-like environment, creating the impression of total immersion. The blue-c portal currently consists of three rectangular projection screens that are built from glass panels containing liquid crystal layers. These screens can be switched from a whitish opaque state (for projection) to a transparent state (for acquisition), which allows the video cameras to "look through" the walls. Our projection technology is based on active stereo using two LCD projectors per screen. The projectors are synchronously shuttered along with the screens, the stereo glasses, active illumination devices, and the acquisition hardware. From multiple video streams, we compute a 3D video representation of the user in real time. The resulting video inlays are integrated into a networked virtual environment. Our design is highly scalable, enabling blue-c to connect to portals with less sophisticated hardware.

A method is presented to recover 3D scene structure and camera motion from multiple images without the need for correspondence information. The problem is framed as finding the maximum likelihood structure and motion given only the 2D measurements, integrating over all possible assignments of 3D features to 2D measurements. This goal is achieved by means of an algorithm which iteratively refines a probability distribution over the set of all correspondence assignments. At each iteration a new structure from motion problem is solved, using as input a set of ’virtual measurements’ derived from this probability distribution. The distribution needed can be efficiently obtained by Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. The approach is cast within the framework of Expectation-Maximization, which guarantees convergence to a local maximizer of the likelihood. The algorithm works well in practice, as will be demonstrated using results on several real image sequences. 1

this article will be published in Presence, Vol

Abstract—This paper proposes a quasi-dense approach to 3D surface model acquisition from uncalibrated images. First, correspondence information and geometry are computed based on new quasi-dense point features that are resampled subpixel points from a disparity map. The quasi-dense approach gives more robust and accurate geometry estimations than the standard sparse approach. The robustness is measured as the success rate of full automatic geometry estimation with all involved parameters fixed. The accuracy is measured by a fast gauge-free uncertainty estimation algorithm. The quasi-dense approach also works for more largely separated images than the sparse approach, therefore, it requires fewer images for modeling. More importantly, the quasidense approach delivers a high density of reconstructed 3D points on which a surface representation can be reconstructed. This fills the gap of insufficiency of the sparse approach for surface reconstruction, essential for modeling and visualization applications. Second, surface reconstruction methods from the given quasi-dense geometry are also developed. The algorithm optimizes new unified functionals integrating both 3D quasi-dense points and 2D image information, including silhouettes. Combining both 3D data and 2D images is more robust than the existing methods using only 2D information or only 3D data. An efficient bounded regularization method is proposed to implement the surface evolution by level-set methods. Its properties are discussed and proven for some cases. As a whole, a complete automatic and practical system of 3D modeling from raw images captured by hand-held cameras to surface representation is proposed. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior performance of the quasi-dense approach with respect to the standard sparse approach in robustness, accuracy, and applicability. Index Terms—Three-dimensional reconstruction, surface reconstruction, structure from motion, 3D modeling, matching, uncertainty, variational calculus, level-set method. æ 1

Previous work in simultaneous localisation and mapbuilding (SLAM) for mobile robots has focused on the simplified case in which a robot is considered to move in two dimensions on a ground plane. While this is sometimes a good approximation, a large number of real-world applications require robots to move around terrain which has significant slopes and undulations. In this paper we describe an EKFbased SLAM system permitting unconstrained 3D localisation, and in particular develop models for the motion of a wheeled robot in the presence of unknown slope variations. In a fully automatic implementation, our robot observes visual point features using fixating stereo vision and builds a sparse map on-the-fly. Combining this visual measurement with information from odometry and a roll/pitch accelerometer sensor, the robot performs accurate, repeatable localisation while traversing an undulating course. 1.

We consider the self-calibration problem for a moving camera whose intrinsic parameters are known, except the focal length, which may vary freely across different views. The conditions under which the determination of the focal length’s values for an image sequence is not possible, are derived. These depend only on the camera’s motions. We give a complete catalogue of the so-called critical motion sequences. This is then used to derive the critical motion sequences for stereo systems with variable focal lengths. 1