Page 127 - Dynamic Vision for Perception and Control of Motion

4 Application Domains, Missions, and Situations

In the previous chapters, the basic tools have been treated for representing objects
and subjects with homogeneous coordinates in a framework of the real 3-D world
and with spatiotemporal models for their motion. Their application in combination
with procedural computing methods will be the subject of Chapters 5 and 6. The
result will be an estimated state of single objects/subjects for the point “here and
now” during the visual observation process. These methods can be applied multiple
times in parallel to n objects in different image regions representing different spa-
tial angles of the world around the set of cameras.
Vision is not supposed to be a separate exercise of its own but to serve some
purpose in a task or mission context of an acting individual (subject). For deeper
understanding of what is being seen and perceived, the goals of egomotion and of
other moving subjects as well as the future trajectories of objects tracked should be
known, at least vaguely. Since there is no information exchange between oneself
and other subjects, usually, their future behavior can only be hypothesized based
on the situation given and the behavioral capabilities of the subjects observed.
However, out of the set of all objects and subjects perceived in parallel, generally
only a few are of direct relevance to their own plans of locomotion.
To be efficient in perceiving the environment, special attention and thus percep-
tual resources and computing power for understanding should be concentrated on
the most important objects/subjects. The knowledge needed for this decision is
quite different from that one needed for visual object and state recognition. The de-
cision has to take into account the mission plan and the likely behavior of other
subjects nearby as well as the general environmental conditions (like quality of
visual perception, weather conditions and likely friction coefficient for maneuver-
ing, as well as surface structure). In addition, the sets of rules for traffic regulation
valid in the part of the world, where the vehicle is in operation, have to be taken
into account.

4.1 Structuring of Application Domains

To survey where the small regime, onto which the rest of the book will be concen-
trating, fits in the overall picture, first (contributions to) a loosely defined ontology
for ground vehicles will be given. Appendix A shows a structured proposal which,
of course, is only one of many possible approaches. Here, only some aspects of
certain missions and application domains are discussed to motivate the items se-