Time-to-Contact from Image Intensity

It is known that time-to-contact toward objects can be estimated just from changes in the object size in camera images, and we do not need any additional information, such as camera parameters and motions. However, the existing methods for measuring the time-to-contact are based on geometric image features, such as corners and edge lines, and thus they cannot be used when there are no geometric features in images. In this paper, we propose a new method for computing the time-to-contact from photometric information in images. When a light source moves in the 3D scene, an observed intensity changes according to the motion of the light source. In this paper, we analyze the change in photometric information in images, and show that the time-to-contact can be estimated just from the changes in intensity in images. Our method does not need any additional information, such as radiance of light source, reflectance of object and orientation of object surface. The proposed method can be used in various applications, such as vehicle driver assistance.