3D visual information from vanishing points

It is shown that when a priori information on the mutual direction of straight lines in the 3D scene is available, vanishing points can be extracted and located reliably on the image plane. Then, by using simple properties of vanishing points, it is possible to perform efficiently several visual tasks, such as estimating the rotational component of motion between the viewer and the scene, and identifying and recovering the orientation and relative position in space of the viewed planar patches. Extensive experimentation on real images shows that vanishing points are usually identified and located correctly, even in cluttered images. It is concluded that the proposed approach can be very helpful for the development of effective vision systems