Multibody motion estimation and segmentation from multiple central panoramic views

We present an algorithm for infinitesimal motion estimation and segmentation from multiple central panoramic views. We first show that the central panoramic optical flows corresponding to independent motions lie in orthogonal ten-dimensional subspaces of a higher-dimensional linear space. We then propose a factorization-based technique that estimates the number of independent motions, the segmentation of the image measurements and the motion of each object relative to the camera from a set of image points and their optical flows in multiple frames. Finally, we present experimental results on motion estimation and segmentation for a real image sequence with two independently moving mobile robots, and evaluate the performance of our algorithm by comparing the vision estimates with GPS measurements gathered by the mobile robots.