Formalization and analyses of pose estimation from a single view

This paper formalizes and analyzes problems of estimating a pose from a single view when an object model and a camera model are provided. For discussing recovery of the rotation of flexible objects, an object model called the vector body model is introduced. This model is represented as a graph consisting of vector bodies and joint vectors, both of which are abstractions of a rigid body and a rotational joint. Any object can be represented as a graph, and a particular rotation estimation problem from object-image correspondence can be derived from its subgraph. Using this formalization, this paper identifies primitive problems that are solvable but would be unsolvable if any vector in the graph were not available. Problems are analyzed from both topological and metrical viewpoints