Multi-view structure computation without explicitly estimating motion

Most existing structure-from-motion methods follow a common two-step scheme, where relative camera motions are estimated in the first step and 3D structure is computed afterward in the second step. This paper presents a novel scheme which bypasses the motion-estimation step, and goes directly to structure computation step. By introducing graph rigidity theory to Sfm problems, we demonstrate that such a scheme is not only theoretically possible, but also technically feasible and effective. We also derive a new convex relaxation technique (based on semi-definite programming) which implements the above scheme very efficiently. Our new method provides other benefits as well, such as that it offers a new way to looking at Sfm, and that it is naturally suited for handling sparse large-scale Sfm problems.