9308415 Seales This is the first-year funding of a three-year continuing Research Initiation Award. The long-term goal of this research is to develop and implement new strategies for building complete models of three-dimensional objects from video sequences. Efficient 3D model-building capabilities are fundamental for mobile robot vision tasks such as learning new shapes, manipulating intricate objects, navigating around obstacles, and recognizing a known shape. A central focus of this project is the analysis of the problem of recovering global three-dimensional shape information from an image sequence under minimal viewing conditions using image curves that are formed from both smooth and non-smooth components of three- dimensional shapes. The viewing situations include two main scenarios: active feedback strategies where information in the image sequence is used to control the camera system; and uncalibrated camera rigs where camera parameters are unknown. This work is based upon an analysis of the behavior of projected curves in image sequences and their relationship to three-dimensional shape. This research will provide a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding that will lead to the development of efficient, implemented and tested strategies for building detailed models of three-dimensional objects under minimal viewing conditions.
