THE COMPUTATIONAL PERCEPTION OF SCENE DYNAMICS

Understanding observations of interacting objects requires one to reas on about qualitative scene dynamics. For example, on observing a hand lifting a can, we may infer that an ''active'' hand is applying an upw ards force (by grasping) to lift a ''passive'' can. We present an impl emented computational theory that derives such dynamic descriptions di rectly from camera input. Our approach is based on an analysis of the Newtonian mechanics of a simplified scene model, Interpretations are e xpressed in terms of assertions about the kinematic and dynamic proper ties of the scene. The feasibility of interpretations relative to Newt onian mechanics is determined by a reduction to linear programming, Fi nally, to select plausible interpretations, multiple feasible solution s are compared using a preference hierarchy. We provide computational examples to demonstrate that our model is sufficiently rich to describ e a wide variety of image sequences. (C) 1997 Academic Press.