3D models from videos

The idea of “expert-in-the-loop” software algorithms has always intrigued me. There are some things that computers do very well, and some things they do very poorly (or are very difficult and complex for computers to do). Vision, especially in three dimensions, is one of those things that computers have a hard time with. Detecting objects and their three-dimensional relationships in a video scene is tough.

So imagine my joy when I stumbled on this work from  The Australian Centre for Visual Technologies at the University of Adelaide, and The Oxford Brookes Computer Vision Group. Using the super-fast human brain to do the initial 3D model interpolation from a video scene, and letting the computer do the mundane stuff like build the model up and keep it consistent between frames. Nice.

Link via BoingBoing.