CS 217: Light and Geometry in Vision

Instructor: Charless Fowlkes
Lectures: TuTh 3:30-5pm, 1420 DBH
Office Hours: after class or by appointment

We will discuss constraints in vision which follow from the underlying physics of light transport in scenes and camera geometry. These typically arise when one thinks of computer vision as the inverse of computer graphics.
Course topics will include:

• Cameras - pinhole mode, thin lense optics, geometric models, calibration
• Projective geometry - homogenous coordinates, homographies
• Multiview geometry - triangulation, epipolar constraints, 8 point algorithm
• Structure from motion - Stratified reconstruction, bundle adjustment, feature correspondence, RANSAC
• Stereo - rectification, matching, dynamic programming
• Light Transport - color, radiometry, global illumination
• Materials - BRDFS, reflectance models
• Photometric stereo, Shape from shading and specularities

The grading for this class will be based on homeworks, participation and a final project

There will be approximately 4 homeworks during the quarter. Each homework due by midnight (11:59pm) on the due date. Late homeworks will not be graded so please just hand in whatever you have completed. Solution sketches will be provided after homeworks have been turned in.

You will be required to use MATLAB for some of your homework problems.

Homeworks can be discussed, but each student must independently write up their own solutions. In particular, no sharing of code. Please see the university policy on academic honesty. It is fine to use reference materials found online, but do not search for homework solutions. Rather, students are strongly encouraged to ask questions at both office hours and on the class discussion group.