In this paper, we propose a new approach to vision-based robot control, called 2 1/2 D visual servoing, which avoids the respective drawbacks of classical positionbased and image-based visual servoing. Contrary to the position-based visual servoing, our scheme does not need any geometric 3D model of the object. Furthermore and contrary to image-based visual servoing, our approach ensures the convergence of the control law in the whole task space. 2 1/2 D visual servoing is based on the estimation of the partial camera displacement from the current to the desired camera poses at each iteration of the control law. Visual features and data extracted from the partial displacement allow us to design a decoupled control law controlling the six camera d.o.f. The robustness of our visual servoing scheme with respect to camera calibration errors is also analyzed: the necessary and sufficient conditions for local asymptotic stability are easily obtained. Then, due to the simple structure of the ...

Abstract—This paper describes a new approach to matching geometric structure in 2D point-sets. The novel feature is to unify the tasks of estimating transformation geometry and identifying point-correspondence matches. Unification is realized by constructing a mixture model over the bipartite graph representing the correspondence match and by affecting optimization using the EM algorithm. According to our EM framework, the probabilities of structural correspondence gate contributions to the expected likelihood function used to estimate maximum likelihood transformation parameters. These gating probabilities measure the consistency of the matched neighborhoods in the graphs. The recovery of transformational geometry and hard correspondence matches are interleaved and are realized by applying coupled update operations to the expected log-likelihood function. In this way, the two processes bootstrap one another. This provides a means of rejecting structural outliers. We evaluate the technique on two real-world problems. The first involves the matching of different perspective views of 3.5-inch floppy discs. The second example is furnished by the matching of a digital map against aerial images that are subject to severe barrel distortion due to a line-scan sampling process. We complement these experiments with a sensitivity study based on synthetic data.

We present an algorithm to estimate the parameters of a linear model in the presence of heteroscedastic noise, i.e., each data point having a different covariance matrix.

This paper describes a new method for lens distortion calibration using only point correspondences in multiple views, without the need to know either the 3D location of the points or the camera locations. The standard lens distortion model is a model of the deviations of a real camera from the ideal pinhole or projective camera model. Given multiple views of a set of corresponding points taken by ideal pinhole cameras there exist epipolar and trilinear constraints among pairs and triplets of these views. In practice, due to noise in the feature detection and due to lens distortion these constraints do not hold exactly and we get some error. The calibration is a search for the lens distortion parameters that minimize this error. Using simulation and experimental results with real images we explore the properties of this method. We describe the use of this method with the standard lens distortion model, radial and decentering, but it could also be used with any other parametric distortio...

AbstractÐWe consider the problem of estimating parameters of a model described by an equation of special form. Specific models arise in the analysis of a wide class of computer vision problems, including conic fitting and estimation of the fundamental matrix. We assume that noisy data are accompanied by (known) covariance matrices characterizing the uncertainty of the measurements. A cost function is first obtained by considering a maximum-likelihood formulation and applying certain necessary approximations that render the problem tractable. A novel, Newton-like iterative scheme is then generated for determining a minimizer of the cost function. Unlike alternative approaches such as Sampson's method or the renormalization technique, the new scheme has as its theoretical limit the minimizer of the cost function. Furthermore, the scheme is simply expressed, efficient, and unsurpassed as a general technique in our testing. An important feature of the method is that it can serve as a basis for conducting theoretical comparison of various estimation approaches.

In this paper, we propose a new approach to visionbased robot control, called 2-1/2-D visual servoing, which avoids the respective drawbacks of classical position-based and imagebased visual servoing. Contrary to the position-based visual servoing, our scheme does not need any geometric three-dimensional (3-D) model of the object. Furthermore and contrary to imagebased visual servoing, our approach ensures the convergence of the control law in the whole task space. 2-1/2-D visual servoing is based on the estimation of the partial camera displacement from the current to the desired camera poses at each iteration of the control law. Visual features and data extracted from the partial displacement allow us to design a decoupled control law controlling the six camera d.o.f. The robustness of our visual servoing scheme with respect to camera calibration errors is also analyzed: the necessary and sufficient conditions for local asymptotic stability are easily obtained. Then, due to the simple structure of the system, sufficient conditions for global asymptotic stability are established. Finally, experimental results with an eye-in-hand robotic system confirm the improvement in the stability and convergence domain of the 2-1/2-D visual servoing with respect to classical position-based and image-based visual servoing.

There are billions of photographs on the Internet, comprising the largest and most diverse photo collection ever assembled. How can computer vision researchers exploit this imagery? This paper explores this question from the standpoint of 3D scene modeling and visualization. We present structure-from-motion and image-based rendering algorithms that operate on hundreds of images downloaded as a result of keyword-based image search queries like “Notre Dame ” or “Trevi Fountain.” This approach, which we call Photo Tourism, has enabled reconstructions of numerous well-known world sites. This paper presents these algorithms and results as a first step towards 3D modeling of the world’s well-photographed sites, cities, and landscapes from Internet imagery, and discusses key open problems and challenges for the research community.

Abstract. Classical visual servoing techniques need a strong a priori knowledge of the shape and the dimensions of the observed objects. In this paper, we present how the 2 1/2 D visual servoing scheme we have recently developed, can be used with unknown objects characterized by a set of points. Our scheme is based on the estimation of the camera displacement from two views, given by the current and desired images. Since vision-based robotics tasks generally necessitate to be performed at video rate, we focus only on linear algorithms. Classical linear methods are based on the computation of the essential matrix. In this paper, we propose a different method, based on the estimation of the homography matrix related to a virtual plane attached to the object. We show that our method provides a more stable estimation when the epipolar geometry degenerates. This is particularly important in visual servoing to obtain a stable control law, especially near the convergence of the system. Finally, experimental results confirm the improvement in the stability, robustness, and behaviour of our scheme with respect to classical methods. Keywords: visual servoing, projective geometry, homography 1.

Abstract. We present a fast, robust algorithm for multi-frame structure from motion from point features which works for general motion and large perspective effects. The algorithm is for point features but easily extends to a direct method based on image intensities. Experiments on synthetic and real sequences show that the algorithm gives results nearly as accurate as the maximum likelihood estimate in a couple of seconds on an IRIS 10000. The results are significantly better than those of an optimal two-image estimate. When the camera projection is close to scaled orthographic, the accuracy is comparable to that of the Tomasi/Kanade algorithm, and the algorithms are comparably fast. The algorithm incorporates a quantitative theoretical analysis of the bas-relief ambiguity and exemplifies how such an analysis can be exploited to improve reconstruction. Also, we demonstrate a structure-from-motion algorithm for partially calibrated cameras, with unknown focal length varying from image to image. Unlike the projective approach, this algorithm fully exploits the partial knowledge of the calibration. It is given by a simple modification of our algorithm for calibrated sequences and is insensitive to errors in calibrating the camera center. Theoretically, we show that unknown focal-length variations strengthen the effects of the bas-relief ambiguity. This paper includes extensive experimental studies of two-frame reconstruction and the Tomasi/Kanade approach in comparison to our algorithm. We find that two-frame algorithms are surprisingly robust and accurate, despite some problems with local minima. We demonstrate experimentally that a nearly optimal

this paper an algorithm to recover high-order motion models from point-to-line correspondences using linear programming is presented. Point-to-line correspondences are robust in the sense that they are largely insensitive to aperture effects and to T-junctions, unlike the common point-to-point correspondences. Point-to-line correspondences can also approximate other measurements as well, such as point-to-point correspondences, correspondences with uncertainty, and the spatiotemporal constraint.