Recovering the Three-Dimensional Motion and Structure of Multiple Moving Objects from Binocular Image Flows

Abstract

A new method is presented for recovering the three-dimensional motion and structure of multiple, independently moving, rigid objects through the analysis of binocular image flow fields. The input to the algorithm is the image location and image velocity of a sparse set of feature points in the stereo image pair. The algorithm analyzes one rigid object at a time by simultaneously segmenting the associated feature points from the input data set, establishing the stereo correspondence of these feature points and determining the three-dimensional motion of the object. The solution method is iterative and is based on the stereo-motion algorithm presented in J. H. Duncan, L. Li, and W. Wang, “Recovering Three-Dimensional Velocity and Established Stereo Correspondence from Binocular Image Flows” (Opt. Eng.34(7), July 1995, 2157–2167.) for the analysis of scenes with only one set of three-dimensional motion components. No restrictions on the three-dimensional structure of the scene are required by the theory. Experimental results with numerically generated and laboratory image sequences are given to verify the method.