Automatic Target Recognition Using Multi-View Morphing

This paper describes a novel approach to automatically recognize the target based on a view morphing database constructed by our multi-view morphing algorithm. Instead of using single reference image, a set of images or a video sequence is used to construct the reference database, where these images are re-organized by a triangulation of viewing sphere. At the vertex of each triangle, one image is stored in the database as the reference view from a specific viewing direction. For each triangle, our tri-view morphing algorithm can synthesize a high quality image for an arbitrary novel viewpoint amongst three neighboring reference images, and the barycentric blending scheme guarantees the seamless transitions between each neighboring triangles. Using the synthesized images, we apply appearance based recognition technique to recognize the target. In addition, using the proposed method, the pose of the object or camera motion can be approximately estimated. Several examples are demonstrated in the experiments to show that our approach is effective and promising.