The image taken by a moving camera changes with time. These image
motions contain information about the motion of the camera and about the
shapes of the objects in the field of view. There are two main types of
image motion, finite displacements and image velocities. Finite
displacements are described by the point correspondences between two
images of the same scene taken from different positions. Image
velocities are the velocities of the points in the image as they move
over the projection surface. Reconstruction is the task of obtaining
from the image-motions information about the camera motion or about the
shapes of objects in the field of view. In this book the theory
underlying reconstruction is described. Reconstruction from image motion
is the subject matter of two different sci- entific disciplines,
photogrammetry and computer vision. In photogrammetry the accuracy of
reconstruction is emphasised; in computer vision the emphasis is on
methods for obtaining information from images in real time in order to
guide a mechanical device such as a robot arm or an automatic vehicle.
This book arises from recent work carried out in computer vision.
Computer vision is a young field but it is developing rapidly. The
earliest papers on reconstruction in the computer vision literature date
back only to the mid 1970s. As computer vision develops, the
mathematical techniques applied to the analysis of recon- struction
become more appropriate and more powerful.