A new structure-from-motion ambiguity

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the existence of a generic approximate ambiguity in Euclidean structure from motion (SFM) which applies to scenes with large depth variation. In projective SFM the ambiguity is absent, but the maximum-likelihood reconstruction is more likely to have occasional very large errors. The analysis gives a semi-quantitative characterization of the least-squares error surface over a domain complementary to that analyzed by Jepson/Heeger/Maybank.