Pose and Structure Recovery using Active Models

A new formulation of a pose refinement technique using “active” models is described. An error term derived from the detection of image derivatives close to an initial object hypothesis is linearised and solved by least squares. The method is particularly well suited to problems involving external geometrical constraints (such as the ground-plane constraint). We show that the method is able to recover both the pose of a rigid model, and the structure of a deformable model. We report an initial assessment of the performance and cost of pose and structure recovery using the active model in comparison with our previously reported “passive” model-based techniques in the context of traffic surveillance. The new method is more stable, and requires fewer iterations, especially when the number of free parameters increases, but shows somewhat poorer convergence.