Subspace methods for image analysis

In 1990, Tomasi and Kanade developed a new solution method, named a factorization method, for the structure-from-motion problem. The factorization method is based on a simple observation that when the trajectories of features in a sequence of video are organized as a matrix where the entries are the feature's image coordinates with the row corresponding to the frame and the column to the feature number, the rank of the matrix is surprisingly only up to 3. This linear algebraic property strongly constrains the solution space, and thus allows for a stable simultaneous recovery of motion and shape. Since then, many researchers found similar subspace constraints and exploited them in solving not only structure from motion problems but other vision problems. They include multi-body motion segmentation, optical flow analysis, non-rigid shape recovery, motion layer extraction, color analysis, and even force sensor calibration. I will review some of these problems, and discuss the common threads that have brought about the power of their solution methods.

Takeo Kanade - received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1974. After holding a faculty position at Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, he joined Carnegie Mellon University in 1980. At Carnegie Mellon he was Director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001, and is currently U. A. Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics. Dr. Kanade has performed research in multiple areas of robotics: vision, multi-media, manipulators, autonomous mobile robots, and sensors. He has written more than 250 technical papers and 15 patents.

Dr. Kanade has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of ACM, and a Founding Fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence. He has received several awards, including the C&C Award, the Joseph Engelberger Award, Allen Newell Research Excellence Award, JARA Award, and a few best paper awards at international conferences and journals. Dr. Kanade has served for many government, industry, and university advisory boards, including Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) of National Research Council, NASA's Advanced Technology Advisory Committee, PITAC Panel for Transforming Healthcare Panel, and Advisory Board of Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.