Motion: Computation, Synthesis and Applications

Human beings can easily perceive three dimensional shape and motion of objects from a sequence of two dimensional images. We do this well despite the loss of information in projecting the three dimensional world onto the two dimensional retina and the ambiguities associated with light as the intermediary of information transmission. Fundamental study of motion and imaging by light transmission will help us someday to mimic the capabilities of human beings. In addition, such knowledge will also allow us to synthesize scenes portraying motion which will appear natural when viewed as a sequence of images. This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, we deal with the problem of determining three dimensional motion of objects from a sequence of images. The second part is concerned with synthesizing a sequence of images by a computer to show natural motion, and finally, a brief discussion of several applications of this technology.