Real-Time camera tracking: when is high frame-rate best?

  • Authors:
  • Ankur Handa;Richard A. Newcombe;Adrien Angeli;Andrew J. Davison

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computing, Imperial College London, UK;Department of Computing, Imperial College London, UK;Department of Computing, Imperial College London, UK;Department of Computing, Imperial College London, UK

  • Venue:
  • ECCV'12 Proceedings of the 12th European conference on Computer Vision - Volume Part VII
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Higher frame-rates promise better tracking of rapid motion, but advanced real-time vision systems rarely exceed the standard 10–60Hz range, arguing that the computation required would be too great. Actually, increasing frame-rate is mitigated by reduced computational cost per frame in trackers which take advantage of prediction. Additionally, when we consider the physics of image formation, high frame-rate implies that the upper bound on shutter time is reduced, leading to less motion blur but more noise. So, putting these factors together, how are application-dependent performance requirements of accuracy, robustness and computational cost optimised as frame-rate varies? Using 3D camera tracking as our test problem, and analysing a fundamental dense whole image alignment approach, we open up a route to a systematic investigation via the careful synthesis of photorealistic video using ray-tracing of a detailed 3D scene, experimentally obtained photometric response and noise models, and rapid camera motions. Our multi-frame-rate, multi-resolution, multi-light-level dataset is based on tens of thousands of hours of CPU rendering time. Our experiments lead to quantitative conclusions about frame-rate selection and highlight the crucial role of full consideration of physical image formation in pushing tracking performance.