Structure from Motion Using Homography Constraints for Sequential Aerial Imagery

With the omnipresence of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), sequential aerial imagery is becoming more widely available in both civilian and military programs. Considering that the monocular imagery is sequentially ordered according to its acquisition time and a dominant ground plane is often visible in the scene, we present a novel and complete automatic Structure from Motion system based on homography constraints. The homography induced by the ground plane is used to recover the camera pose. The windowed bundle adjustment and automatic loop closure are performed in sequential reconstruction. The global bundle adjustment is performed over the complete reconstruction. The proposed SfM system has successfully been used for sequential aerial imagery taken from a UAV.