Two images of a single scene/object are related by the epipolar geometry, which can be described by a 3×3 singular matrix called the essential matrix if images' internal parameters are known, or the fundamental matrix otherwise. It captures all geometric information contained in two images, and its determination is very important in many applications such as scene modeling and vehicle navigation. This paper gives an introduction to the epipolar geometry, and provides a complete review of the current techniques for estimating the fundamental matrix and its uncertainty. A well-founded measure is proposed to compare these techniques. Projective reconstruction is also reviewed. The software which we have developed for this review is available on the Internet.

We describe a new method for camera autocalibration and scaled Euclidean structure and motion, from three or more views taken by a moving camera with fixed but unknown intrinsic parameters. The motion constancy of these is used to rectify an initial projective reconstruction. Euclidean scene structure is formulated in terms of the absolute quadric — the singular dual 3D quadric ( rank 3 matrix) giving the Euclidean dot-product between plane normals. This is equivalent to the traditional absolute conic but simpler to use. It encodes both affine and Euclidean structure, and projects very simply to the dual absolute image conic which encodes camera calibration. Requiring the projection to be constant gives a bilinear constraint between the absolute quadric and image conic, from which both can be recovered nonlinearly from images, or quasi-linearly from. Calibration and Euclidean structure follow easily. The nonlinear method is stabler, faster, more accurate and more general than the quasi-linear one. It is based on a general constrained optimization technique — sequential quadratic programming — that may well be useful in other vision problems.

Leonard McMillan Jr. An Image-Based Approach to Three-Dimensional Computer Graphics (Under the direction of Gary Bishop) The conventional approach to three-dimensional computer graphics produces images from geometric scene descriptions by simulating the interaction of light with matter. My research explores an alternative approach that replaces the geometric scene description with perspective images and replaces the simulation process with data interpolation. I derive an image-warping equation that maps the visible points in a reference image to their correct positions in any desired view. This mapping from reference image to desired image is determined by the center-of-projection and pinhole-camera model of the two images and by a generalized disparity value associated with each point in the reference image. This generalized disparity value, which represents the structure of the scene, can be determined from point correspondences between multiple reference images. The image-warpi...

A structure from motion algorithm is described which recovers structure and camera position, modulo a projective ambiguity. Camera calibration is not required, and camera parameters such as focal length can be altered freely during motion. The structure is updated sequentially over an image sequence, in contrast to schemes which employ a batch process. A specialisation of the algorithm to recover structure and camera position modulo an affine transformation is described, together with a method to periodically update the affine coordinate frame to prevent drift over time. We describe the constraint used to obtain this specialisation. Structure is recovered from image corners detected and matched automatically and reliably in real image sequences. Results are shown for reference objects and indoor environments, and accuracy of recovered structure is fully evaluated and compared for a number of reconstruction schemes. A specific application of the work is demonstrated -- affine structure is used to compute free space maps enabling navigation through unstructured environments and avoidance of obstacles. The path planning involves only affine constructions.

Modelling th# push broom sensors commonly used in satellite imagery is quite di#cult and computationally intensive due to th# complicated motion ofth# orbiting satellite with respect to th# rotating earth# In addition, th# math#46 tical model is quite complex, involving orbital dynamics, andh#(0k is di#cult to analyze. Inth#A paper, a simplified model of apush broom sensor(th# linear push broom model) is introduced. Ith as th e advantage of computational simplicity wh#A9 atth# same time giving very accurate results compared with th# full orbitingpush broom model. Meth# ds are given for solving th# major standardph# togrammetric problems for th e linear push broom sensor. Simple non-iterative solutions are given for th# following problems : computation of th# model parameters from groundcontrol points; determination of relative model parameters from image correspondences between two images; scene reconstruction given image correspondences and ground-control points. In addition, th# linearpush broom model leads toth#0 retical insigh ts th# t will be approximately valid for th# full model as well.Th# epipolar geometry of linear push broom cameras in investigated and sh own to be totally di#erent from th at of a perspective camera. Neverth eless, a matrix analogous to th e essential matrix of perspective cameras issh own to exist for linear push broom sensors. Fromth#0 it is sh# wn th# t a scene is determined up to an a#ne transformation from two viewswith linearpush broom cameras. Keywords :push broom sensor, satellite image, essential matrixph# togrammetry, camera model The research describ ed in this paper hasb een supportedb y DARPA Contract #MDA97291 -C-0053 1 Real Push broom sensors are commonly used in satellite cameras, notably th# SPOT satellite forth# generatio...

This paper describes a theory and a practical algorithm for the autocalibration of a moving projective camera, from views of a planar scene. The unknown camera calibration, and (up to scale) the unknown scene geometry and camera motion are recovered from the hypothesis that the camera’s internal parameters remain constant during the motion. This work extends the various existing methods for non-planar autocalibration to a practically common situation in which it is not possible to bootstrap the calibration from an intermediate projective reconstruction. It also extends Hartley’s method for the internal calibration of a rotating camera, to allow camera translation and to provide 3D as well as calibration information. The basic constraint is that the projections of orthogonal direction vectors (points at infinity) in the plane must be orthogonal in the calibrated camera frame of each image. Abstractly, since the two circular points of the 3D plane (representing its Euclidean structure) lie on the 3D absolute conic, their projections into each image must lie on the absolute conic’s image (representing the camera calibration). The resulting numerical algorithm optimizes this constraint over all circular points and projective calibration parameters, using the inter-image homographies as a projective scene representation.

This paper describes a family of factorization-based algorithms that recover 3D projective structure and motion from multiple uncalibrated perspective images of 3D points and lines. They can be viewed as generalizations of the Tomasi-Kanade algorithm from affine to fully perspective cameras, and from points to lines. They make no restrictive assumptions about scene or camera geometry, and unlike most existing reconstruction methods they do not rely on ‘privileged’ points or images. All of the available image data is used, and each feature in each image is treated uniformly. The key to projective factorization is the recovery of a consistent set of projective depths (scale factors) for the image points: this is done using fundamental matrices and epipoles estimated from the image data. We compare the performance of the new techniques with several existing ones, and also describe an approximate factorization method that gives similar results to SVDbased factorization, but runs much more quickly for large problems.

The Errors-in-Variables (EIV) model from statistics is often employed in computer vision though only rarely under this name. In an EIV model all the measurements are corrupted by noise while the a priori information is captured with a nonlinear constraint among the true (unknown) values of these measurements. To estimate the model parameters and the uncorrupted data, the constraint can be linearized, i.e., embedded in a higher dimensional space. We show that linearization introduces data-dependent (heteroscedastic) noise and propose an iterative procedure, the heteroscedastic EIV (HEIV) estimator to obtain consistent estimates in the most general, multivariate case. Analytical expressions for the covariances of the parameter estimates and corrected data points, a generic method for the enforcement of ancillary constraints arising from the underlying geometry are also given. The HEIV estimator minimizes the first order approximation of the geometric distances between the measurements and the true data points, and thus can be a substitute for the widely used LevenbergMarquardt based direct solution of the original, nonlinear problem. The HEIV estimator has however the advantage of a weaker dependence on the initial solution and a faster convergence. In comparison to Kanatani's renormalization paradigm (an earlier solution of the same problem) the HEIV estimator has more solid theoretical foundations which translate into better numerical behavior. We show that the HEIV estimator can provide an accurate solution to most 3D vision estimation tasks, and illustrate its performance through two case studies: calibration and the estimation of the fundamental matrix.

This paper provides a review on techniques for computing a three-dimensional model of a scene from a single moving camera, with unconstrained motion and unknown parameters. In the classical approach, called autocalibration or self-calibration, camera motion and parameters are recovered first, using rigidity; then structure is easily computed. Recently, new methods based on the idea of stratification have been proposed. They upgrade the projective structure, achievable from correspondences only, to the Euclidean structure, by exploiting all the available constraints.

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