IMAGE SEQUENCES—TEN (OCTAL) YEARS—FROM PHENOMENOLOGY TOWARDS A THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

Abstract

Many investigations of image sequences can be understood on the basis of a few concepts for which computational approaches become increasingly available. The estimation of optical flow fields is discussed, exhibiting a common foundation for feature-based and differential approaches. The interpretation of optical flow fields is mostly concerned so far with approaches which infer the 3-D structure of a rigid point configuration in 3-D space and its relative motion with respect to the image sensor from an image sequence. The combination of stereo and motion provides additional incentives to evaluate image sequences, especially for the control of robots and autonomous vehicles. Advances in all these areas lead to the desire to describe the spatio-temporal development recorded by an image sequence not only at the level of geometry, but also at higher conceptual levels, for example by natural language descriptions.