Simultaneous Stereo Video Deblurring and Scene Flow Estimation

Videos for outdoor scene often show unpleasant blur effects due to the large relative motion between the camera and the dynamic objects and large depth variations. Existing works typically focus monocular video deblurring. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to deblurring from stereo videos. In particular, we exploit the piece-wise planar assumption about the scene and leverage the scene flow information to deblur the image. Unlike the existing approach [31] which used a pre-computed scene flow, we propose a single framework to jointly estimate the scene flow and deblur the image, where the motion cues from scene flow estimation and blur information could reinforce each other, and produce superior results than the conventional scene flow estimation or stereo deblurring methods. We evaluate our method extensively on two available datasets and achieve significant improvement in flow estimation and removing the blur effect over the state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted to IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 201

Multi-Scale 3D Scene Flow from Binocular Stereo Sequences

Scene flow methods estimate the three-dimensional motion field for points in the world, using multi-camera video data. Such methods combine multi-view reconstruction with motion estimation. This paper describes an alternative formulation for dense scene flow estimation that provides reliable results using only two cameras by fusing stereo and optical flow estimation into a single coherent framework. Internally, the proposed algorithm generates probability distributions for optical flow and disparity. Taking into account the uncertainty in the intermediate stages allows for more reliable estimation of the 3D scene flow than previous methods allow. To handle the aperture problems inherent in the estimation of optical flow and disparity, a multi-scale method along with a novel region-based technique is used within a regularized solution. This combined approach both preserves discontinuities and prevents over-regularization – two problems commonly associated with the basic multi-scale approaches. Experiments with synthetic and real test data demonstrate the strength of the proposed approach.National Science Foundation (CNS-0202067, IIS-0208876); Office of Naval Research (N00014-03-1-0108

Fast Multi-frame Stereo Scene Flow with Motion Segmentation

We propose a new multi-frame method for efficiently computing scene flow (dense depth and optical flow) and camera ego-motion for a dynamic scene observed from a moving stereo camera rig. Our technique also segments out moving objects from the rigid scene. In our method, we first estimate the disparity map and the 6-DOF camera motion using stereo matching and visual odometry. We then identify regions inconsistent with the estimated camera motion and compute per-pixel optical flow only at these regions. This flow proposal is fused with the camera motion-based flow proposal using fusion moves to obtain the final optical flow and motion segmentation. This unified framework benefits all four tasks - stereo, optical flow, visual odometry and motion segmentation leading to overall higher accuracy and efficiency. Our method is currently ranked third on the KITTI 2015 scene flow benchmark. Furthermore, our CPU implementation runs in 2-3 seconds per frame which is 1-3 orders of magnitude faster than the top six methods. We also report a thorough evaluation on challenging Sintel sequences with fast camera and object motion, where our method consistently outperforms OSF [Menze and Geiger, 2015], which is currently ranked second on the KITTI benchmark.Comment: 15 pages. To appear at IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2017). Our results were submitted to KITTI 2015 Stereo Scene Flow Benchmark in November 201

Online Mutual Foreground Segmentation for Multispectral Stereo Videos

The segmentation of video sequences into foreground and background regions is a low-level process commonly used in video content analysis and smart surveillance applications. Using a multispectral camera setup can improve this process by providing more diverse data to help identify objects despite adverse imaging conditions. The registration of several data sources is however not trivial if the appearance of objects produced by each sensor differs substantially. This problem is further complicated when parallax effects cannot be ignored when using close-range stereo pairs. In this work, we present a new method to simultaneously tackle multispectral segmentation and stereo registration. Using an iterative procedure, we estimate the labeling result for one problem using the provisional result of the other. Our approach is based on the alternating minimization of two energy functions that are linked through the use of dynamic priors. We rely on the integration of shape and appearance cues to find proper multispectral correspondences, and to properly segment objects in low contrast regions. We also formulate our model as a frame processing pipeline using higher order terms to improve the temporal coherence of our results. Our method is evaluated under different configurations on multiple multispectral datasets, and our implementation is available online.Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in IJCV (December 2018

Combining Features and Semantics for Low-level Computer Vision

Visual perception of depth and motion plays a significant role in understanding and navigating the environment. Reconstructing outdoor scenes in 3D and estimating the motion from video cameras are of utmost importance for applications like autonomous driving. The corresponding problems in computer vision have witnessed tremendous progress over the last decades, yet some aspects still remain challenging today. Striking examples are reflecting and textureless surfaces or large motions which cannot be easily recovered using traditional local methods. Further challenges include occlusions, large distortions and difficult lighting conditions. In this thesis, we propose to overcome these challenges by modeling non-local interactions leveraging semantics and contextual information. Firstly, for binocular stereo estimation, we propose to regularize over larger areas on the image using object-category specific disparity proposals which we sample using inverse graphics techniques based on a sparse disparity estimate and a semantic segmentation of the image. The disparity proposals encode the fact that objects of certain categories are not arbitrarily shaped but typically exhibit regular structures. We integrate them as non-local regularizer for the challenging object class 'car' into a superpixel-based graphical model and demonstrate its benefits especially in reflective regions. Secondly, for 3D reconstruction, we leverage the fact that the larger the reconstructed area, the more likely objects of similar type and shape will occur in the scene. This is particularly true for outdoor scenes where buildings and vehicles often suffer from missing texture or reflections, but share similarity in 3D shape. We take advantage of this shape similarity by localizing objects using detectors and jointly reconstructing them while learning a volumetric model of their shape. This allows to reduce noise while completing missing surfaces as objects of similar shape benefit from all observations for the respective category. Evaluations with respect to LIDAR ground-truth on a novel challenging suburban dataset show the advantages of modeling structural dependencies between objects. Finally, motivated by the success of deep learning techniques in matching problems, we present a method for learning context-aware features for solving optical flow using discrete optimization. Towards this goal, we present an efficient way of training a context network with a large receptive field size on top of a local network using dilated convolutions on patches. We perform feature matching by comparing each pixel in the reference image to every pixel in the target image, utilizing fast GPU matrix multiplication. The matching cost volume from the network's output forms the data term for discrete MAP inference in a pairwise Markov random field. Extensive evaluations reveal the importance of context for feature matching.Die visuelle Wahrnehmung von Tiefe und Bewegung spielt eine wichtige Rolle bei dem Verständnis und der Navigation in unserer Umwelt. Die 3D Rekonstruktion von Szenen im Freien und die Schätzung der Bewegung von Videokameras sind von größter Bedeutung für Anwendungen, wie das autonome Fahren. Die Erforschung der entsprechenden Probleme des maschinellen Sehens hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten enorme Fortschritte gemacht, jedoch bleiben einige Aspekte heute noch ungelöst. Beispiele hierfür sind reflektierende und texturlose Oberflächen oder große Bewegungen, bei denen herkömmliche lokale Methoden häufig scheitern. Weitere Herausforderungen sind niedrige Bildraten, Verdeckungen, große Verzerrungen und schwierige Lichtverhältnisse. In dieser Arbeit schlagen wir vor nicht-lokale Interaktionen zu modellieren, die semantische und kontextbezogene Informationen nutzen, um diese Herausforderungen zu meistern. Für die binokulare Stereo Schätzung schlagen wir zuallererst vor zusammenhängende Bereiche mit objektklassen-spezifischen Disparitäts Vorschlägen zu regularisieren, die wir mit inversen Grafik Techniken auf der Grundlage einer spärlichen Disparitätsschätzung und semantischen Segmentierung des Bildes erhalten. Die Disparitäts Vorschläge kodieren die Tatsache, dass die Gegenstände bestimmter Kategorien nicht willkürlich geformt sind, sondern typischerweise regelmäßige Strukturen aufweisen. Wir integrieren sie für die komplexe Objektklasse 'Auto' in Form eines nicht-lokalen Regularisierungsterm in ein Superpixel-basiertes grafisches Modell und zeigen die Vorteile vor allem in reflektierenden Bereichen. Zweitens nutzen wir für die 3D-Rekonstruktion die Tatsache, dass mit der Größe der rekonstruierten Fläche auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit steigt, Objekte von ähnlicher Art und Form in der Szene zu enthalten. Dies gilt besonders für Szenen im Freien, in denen Gebäude und Fahrzeuge oft vorkommen, die unter fehlender Textur oder Reflexionen leiden aber ähnlichkeit in der Form aufweisen. Wir nutzen diese ähnlichkeiten zur Lokalisierung von Objekten mit Detektoren und zur gemeinsamen Rekonstruktion indem ein volumetrisches Modell ihrer Form erlernt wird. Dies ermöglicht auftretendes Rauschen zu reduzieren, während fehlende Flächen vervollständigt werden, da Objekte ähnlicher Form von allen Beobachtungen der jeweiligen Kategorie profitieren. Die Evaluierung auf einem neuen, herausfordernden vorstädtischen Datensatz in Anbetracht von LIDAR-Entfernungsdaten zeigt die Vorteile der Modellierung von strukturellen Abhängigkeiten zwischen Objekten. Zuletzt, motiviert durch den Erfolg von Deep Learning Techniken bei der Mustererkennung, präsentieren wir eine Methode zum Erlernen von kontextbezogenen Merkmalen zur Lösung des optischen Flusses mittels diskreter Optimierung. Dazu stellen wir eine effiziente Methode vor um zusätzlich zu einem Lokalen Netzwerk ein Kontext-Netzwerk zu erlernen, das mit Hilfe von erweiterter Faltung auf Patches ein großes rezeptives Feld besitzt. Für das Feature Matching vergleichen wir mit schnellen GPU-Matrixmultiplikation jedes Pixel im Referenzbild mit jedem Pixel im Zielbild. Das aus dem Netzwerk resultierende Matching Kostenvolumen bildet den Datenterm für eine diskrete MAP Inferenz in einem paarweisen Markov Random Field. Eine umfangreiche Evaluierung zeigt die Relevanz des Kontextes für das Feature Matching

Image Understanding and Robotics Research at Columbia University

The research investigations of the Vision/Robotics Laboratory at Columbia University reflect the diversity of interests of its four faculty members, two staff programmers and 15 Ph.D. students. Several of the projects involve either a visiting computer science post-doc, other faculty members in the department or the university, or researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories or Philips laboratories. We list below a summary of our interest and results, together with the principal researchers associated with them. Since it is difficult to separate those aspects of robotic research that are purely visual from those that are vision-like (for example, tactile sensing) or vision-related (for example, integrated vision-robotic systems), we have listed all robotic research that is not purely manipulative