Transitory image sequences, asymptotic properties, and estimation of motion and structure

A transitory image sequence is one in which no scene element is visible through the entire sequence. This article deals with some major theoretical and algorithmic issues associated with the task of estimating structure and motion from transitory image sequences. It is shown that integration with a transitory sequence has properties that are very different from those with a nontransitory one. Two representations, world-centered (WC) and camera-centered (CC), behave very differently with a transitory sequence. The asymptotic error rates derived in this article indicate that one representation is significantly superior to the other, depending on whether one needs camera-centered or world-centered estimates. We introduce an efficient “cross-frame” estimation technique for the CC representation. For the WC representation, our analysis indicates that a good technique should be based on camera global pose instead of interframe motions. Rigorous experiments were conducted with real-image sequences taken by a fully calibrated camera system