New devices for 3D pose estimation: Mantis eyes, agam paintings, sundials,and other space fiducials

Several unconventional ideas for viewer/camera pose estimation are discusse d. The methods proposed so far advocate the use of advanced image processin g for identification and precise location of calibration objects in the ima ges acquired, and base pose recovery on the identification of the viewing d ependent deformations of these objects. We propose to more fully exploit th e freedom in the design of "space fiducials" or calibration objects showing that we can build objects whose images directly encode, in easily identifi able gray-level/color or temporal patterns, the pose of their viewer. We al so show how to construct high-precision fiducials, which can determine a vi ewing direction quite accurately when it is known to lie within a relativel y narrow range.