3D worlds for Change Detection, Compression, Stabilization and Tracking in Aerial Video

Principal Investigator: Jan-Michael Frahm and Marc Pollefeys
Funding Agency: US Department of Energy
Agency Number: DE-FG52-08NA28778

Abstract
We propose to develop a 3D reconstruction system for aerial video for persistent tracking, change detection, image stabilization and compression. The proposed change detection is robust against illumination change of the scene which is important to guarantee a persistent surveillance. The known 3D geometry enables an efficient compression of the aerial video which can be down stream to a base station in real-time to provide a remote live view of the high resolution aerial video stream. Our proposed method enables a freely moving platform while at the same time being able to compensate for all algorithms for the camera motion. This is possible due to an accurate estimation of the relative camera motion. This known camera motion together with the 3D model provides a powerful image stabilization that can correct even for depth dependent imaging effect for example for high buildings.