In order to insert a virtual object into a TV image, the graphics system needs to know precisely how the camera is moving, so that the virtual object can be rendered in the correct place in every frame. Nowadays this can be achieved relatively easily in post-production, or in a studio equipped with a special tracking system. However, for live shooting on location, or in a studio that is not specially equipped, installing such a system can be difficult or uneconomic. To overcome these limitations, the MATRIS project is developing a real-time system for measuring the movement of a .... Paper(pdf)

We propose a model-based camera pose estimation approach, which makes use of GPU-assisted analysis-by-synthesis methods on a very wide field of view (e.g. fish-eye) camera. After an initial registration, the synthesis part of the tracking is performed on graphics hardware, which simulates internal and external parameters of the camera, this way minimizing lens and perspective differences between a model view and a real camera image. We show how such a model is ... Paper(pdf)

In Augmented Reality applications, a 3D object is registered with a camera and visual augmentations of the object are rendered into the users field of view with a head mounted display. For correct rendering, the 3D pose of the users view w.r.t. the 3D object must be registered and tracked in real-time, which is a computational intensive task. This contribution describes a distributed system that allows to track the 3D camera pose and to render images on a light-weight mobile front end user interface... Paper(pdf)

In this paper we present an approach to generate novel views from multiple images without known geometry at interactive framerates. Starting with a set of calibrated images, coarse depth information is computed for the images using a plane-sweep algorithm. During interactive rendering, the geometry approximation is used to guide the photo consistent reconstruction based on a tiled plane-sweep refinement. Paper(pdf)

This article describes a distributed mobile ARSystem designed for industrial service applications. By distributing the different tasks involved in AR, the computational load of the portable system can be minimized such that a small and lightweight computer can be used. ... Paper (PDF)

This paper describes a visual markerless real-time tracking system for Augmented Reality applications. The system uses a firewire camera with a fisheye lens mounted at 10 fps. Visual tracking of 3D scene points is performed simultaneously with 3D camera pose estimation without any prior scene knowledge. All visual-geometric data is acquired using a structure-from-motion approach. ...

A standard approach to generate a camera pose from images of a single moving camera is Structure From Motion (SfM). When aiming on a practical implementation of SfM often a camera is needed that is lightweight and small. This work analyses which is the best camera and lens for SfM, that is small in size and available on the market. Therefore we compare cameras with fisheye and perspective lenses. It is shown that pose estimation is improved by a fisheye lens. Also some methods are discussed, how the large Field of View can be further exploited to improve the pose estimation. Paper(pdf)

Mobile tracking systems are of wide interest. For instance sport photographers often hire helicopters to obtain close range images of e.g. aquatic athletes. Besides the high price for hiring a helicopter, good helicopter pilots are not everywhere available. One way to circumvent these problems is the use of a cheap model helicopter. Since flying a model helicopter is a demanding task, there are either two persons needed for the operation of the system (one person for steering the helicopter and the other for the operation of the camera), or .... Paper(pdf)

This contribution describes a system for 3D surface reconstruction and novel view synthesis from image streams of an unknown but static scene. The system operates fully automatic and estimates camera pose and 3D scene geometry using Structure-from-Motion and dense multi-camera stereo reconstruction. From these estimates, novel views of the scene can be rendered at interactive rates. For this, the topology problem must be solved to distinguish between connected and occluded surfaces from all views. Another way would be to render .... Paper(pdf)