The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

The complete set of measurements that could ever be used by a passive 3D vision algorithm is the plenoptic function or light-field. We give a concise characterization of when the light-field of a Lambertian scene uniquely determines its shape and, conversely, when the shape is inherently ambiguous. In particular, we show that stereo computed from the light-field is ambiguous if and only if the scene is radiating light of a constant intensity (and color, etc) over an extended region.

Keywords

Stereo, inherent ambiguities, uniqueness, light-fields, the plenoptic function

Notes

Sponsor: Office of Naval Research

Grant ID: N00014-00-1-0915

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Vision and Autonomous Systems Center

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Human Identification at a Distance

Associated Project(s): Photometric Limits on Computer Vision and Light-fields

Text Reference

Simon Baker, Terence Sim, and Takeo Kanade, "A Fundamental Theorem of Stereo?," tech. report CMU-RI-TR-01-07, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, June, 2001

BibTeX Reference

@techreport{Baker_2001_3753,
   author = "Simon Baker and Terence Sim and Takeo Kanade",
   title = "A Fundamental Theorem of Stereo?",
   booktitle = "",
   institution = "Robotics Institute",
   month = "June",
   year = "2001",
   number= "CMU-RI-TR-01-07",
   address= "Pittsburgh, PA",
}

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