The  Weizmann  Institute  of  Science
                 Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science


                         Vision and Robotics Seminar

                               Ohad Ben-Shahar
                            Ben-Gurion University


                                will speak on


                      On Shape from Specular Flow, or...
                   Does it make any sense to move your head
                          when you look at a mirror?

Abstract:
The image of a curved, specular (mirror-like) surface is a distorted reflection
of the environment.  Although the recovery of such specular shape from its
image appears futile without some knowledge of the environment, the goal of
this work is to develop a theoretical and practical framework for solving this
shape inference problem when the environment is completely unknown.  We show
that although this general problem is severely ill-posed, allowing relative
object-environment motion induces a dense specular flow in the image plane
which can be related to surface shape through a pair of coupled non-linear
partial differential equations that are independent on the environment
content.  We examine the qualitative and geometric properties of these
equations and present analytic and numerical methods for dense recovery of
specular shape in several cases.




                     The lecture will take place in the
                    Lecture Hall, Room 1, Ziskind Building
                         on Thursday, April 17, 2008
                                12:00 - 13:00