Mirrors in computer graphics, computer vision and time-of-flight imaging

Abstract

Mirroring is one of the fundamental light/surface interactions occurring in the real world. Surfaces often cause specular reflection, making it necessary to design robust geometry recovery algorithms for many practical situations. In these applications the specular nature of the surface is a challenge. On the other side, mirrors, with their unique reflective properties, can be used to improve our sensing modalities, enabling applications such as surround, stereo and light field imaging. In these scenarios the specular interactions are highly desirable. Both of these aspects, the utilization and circumvention of mirrors are present in a significant amount of publications in different scientific areas. These publications are covering a large number of different problem statements as well as many different approaches to solutions. In the chapter we will focus on a collection and classification of the work in this area. © Springer-Verlag 2013.