Online Algorithms for Factorization-Based Structure from Motion

TL;DR

This paper introduces fast online algorithms for real-time structure from motion that handle missing data, noise, and outliers, enabling real-time 3D modeling on standard laptops.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel family of online algorithms that significantly improve speed and robustness in factorization-based structure from motion.

Findings

Algorithms are orders of magnitude faster than previous methods.

Methods effectively handle missing data and outliers.

Real-time 3D modeling demonstrated on a standard laptop.

Abstract

We present a family of online algorithms for real-time factorization-based structure from motion, leveraging a relationship between incremental singular value decomposition and recently proposed methods for online matrix completion. Our methods are orders of magnitude faster than previous state of the art, can handle missing data and a variable number of feature points, and are robust to noise and sparse outliers. We demonstrate our methods on both real and synthetic sequences and show that they perform well in both online and batch settings. We also provide an implementation which is able to produce 3D models in real time using a laptop with a webcam.