Motion Estimation
Today’s Readings
Trucco & Verri, 8.3 – 8.4 (skip 8.3.3, read only top half of p. 199)
Numerical Recipes (Newton-Raphson), 9.4 (first four pages)
http://www.library.cornell.edu/nr/bookcpdf/c9-4.pdf

Why estimate motion?
Lots of uses
Track object behavior
Correct for camera jitter (stabilization)
Align images (mosaics)
3D shape reconstruction
Special effects

Optical flow

Problem definition:  optical flow
How to estimate pixel motion from image H to image I?

Optical flow constraints (grayscale images)
Let’s look at these constraints more closely

Optical flow equation
Combining these two equations

Optical flow equation
Q:  how many unknowns and equations per pixel?

Aperture problem

Aperture problem

Solving the aperture problem
How to get more equations for a pixel?
Basic idea:  impose additional constraints
most common is to assume that the flow field is smooth locally
one method:  pretend the pixel’s neighbors have the same (u,v)
If we use a 5x5 window, that gives us 25 equations per pixel!

Lucas-Kanade flow
Prob:  we have more equations than unknowns

Conditions for solvability
Optimal (u, v) satisfies Lucas-Kanade equation

Errors in Lucas-Kanade
What are the potential causes of errors in this procedure?
Suppose ATA is easily invertible
Suppose there is not much noise in the image

Improving accuracy
Recall our small motion assumption

Iterative Refinement

Revisiting the small motion assumption
Is this motion small enough?
Probably not—it’s much larger than one pixel (2nd order terms dominate)
How might we solve this problem?

Reduce the resolution!

Coarse-to-fine optical flow estimation

Coarse-to-fine optical flow estimation

Optical flow result

Motion tracking
Suppose we have more than two images
How to track a point through all of the images?

Tracking features
Feature tracking
Find feature correspondence between consecutive H, I
Chain these together to find long-range correspondences

Application:  Rotoscoping (demo)