arXiv subjects

Timothy Duff

Publications and source records attributed to Timothy Duff.

35 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Using monodromy to recover symmetries of polynomial systems

Galois/monodromy groups attached to parametric systems of polynomial equations provide a method for detecting the existence of symmetries in solution sets. Beyond the question of existence, one would like to compute formulas for these symmetries, towards the eventual goal of solving the systems more efficiently. We describe and implement one possible approach to this task using numerical homotopy continuation and multivariate rational function interpolation. We describe additional methods that detect and exploit a priori unknown quasi-homogeneous structure in symmetries. These methods extend the range of interpolation to larger examples, including applications with nonlinear symmetries drawn from vision and robotics.

math.AG↗

arXiv2023

Algebra and Geometry of Camera Resectioning

We study algebraic varieties associated with the camera resectioning problem. We characterize these resectioning varieties' multigraded vanishing ideals using Gröbner basis techniques. As an application, we derive and re-interpret celebrated results in geometric computer vision related to camera-point duality. We also clarify some relationships between the classical problems of optimal resectioning and triangulation, state a conjectural formula for the Euclidean distance degree of the resectioning variety, and discuss how this conjecture relates to the recently-resolved multiview conjecture.

math.AG↗

arXiv2023

Geometric Solution to the Angles-Only Initial Orbit Determination Problem

Initial orbit determination (IOD) from line-of-sight (i.e., bearing) measurements is a classical problem in astrodynamics. Indeed, there are many well-established methods for performing the IOD task when given three line-of-sight observations at known times. Interestingly, and in contrast to these existing methods, concepts from algebraic geometry may be used to produce a purely geometric solution. This idea is based on the fact that bearings from observers in general position may be used to directly recover the shape and orientation of a three-dimensional conic (e.g., a Keplerian orbit) without any need for knowledge of time. In general, it is shown that five bearings at unknown times are sufficient to recover the orbit -- without the use of any type of initial guess and without the need to propagate the orbit. Three bearings are sufficient for purely geometric IOD if the orbit is known to be (approximately) circular. The method has been tested over different scenarios, including one where extra observations make the system of equations over-determined.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

Trifocal Relative Pose from Lines at Points and its Efficient Solution

We present a method for solving two minimal problems for relative camera pose estimation from three views, which are based on three view correspondences of i) three points and one line and the novel case of ii) three points and two lines through two of the points. These problems are too difficult to be efficiently solved by the state of the art Groebner basis methods. Our method is based on a new efficient homotopy continuation (HC) solver framework MINUS, which dramatically speeds up previous HC solving by specializing HC methods to generic cases of our problems. We characterize their number of solutions and show with simulated experiments that our solvers are numerically robust and stable under image noise, a key contribution given the borderline intractable degree of nonlinearity of trinocular constraints. We show in real experiments that i) SIFT feature location and orientation provide good enough point-and-line correspondences for three-view reconstruction and ii) that we can solve difficult cases with too few or too noisy tentative matches, where the state of the art structure from motion initialization fails.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2022

An Atlas for the Pinhole Camera

We introduce an atlas of algebro-geometric objects associated with image formation in pinhole cameras. The nodes of the atlas are algebraic varieties or their vanishing ideals related to each other by projection or elimination and restriction or specialization respectively. This atlas offers a unifying framework for the study of problems in 3D computer vision. We initiate the study of the atlas by completely characterizing a part of the atlas stemming from the triangulation problem. We conclude with several open problems and generalizations of the atlas.

math.AG↗

arXiv2022

$u$-generation: solving systems of polynomials equation-by-equation

We develop a new method that improves the efficiency of equation-by-equation algorithms for solving polynomial systems. Our method is based on a novel geometric construction, and reduces the total number of homotopy paths that must be numerically continued. These improvements may be applied to the basic algorithms of numerical algebraic geometry in the settings of both projective and multiprojective varieties. Our computational experiments demonstrate significant savings obtained on several benchmark systems. We also present an extended case study on maximum likelihood estimation for rank-constrained symmetric $n\times n$ matrices, in which multiprojective $u$-generation allows us to complete the list of ML degrees for $n\le 6.$

math.AG↗

arXiv2021

Learning to Solve Hard Minimal Problems

We present an approach to solving hard geometric optimization problems in the RANSAC framework. The hard minimal problems arise from relaxing the original geometric optimization problem into a minimal problem with many spurious solutions. Our approach avoids computing large numbers of spurious solutions. We design a learning strategy for selecting a starting problem-solution pair that can be numerically continued to the problem and the solution of interest. We demonstrate our approach by developing a RANSAC solver for the problem of computing the relative pose of three calibrated cameras, via a minimal relaxation using four points in each view. On average, we can solve a single problem in under 70 $μs.$ We also benchmark and study our engineering choices on the very familiar problem of computing the relative pose of two calibrated cameras, via the minimal case of five points in two views.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

Nonlinear Algebra and Applications

We showcase applications of nonlinear algebra in the sciences and engineering. Our review is organized into eight themes: polynomial optimization, partial differential equations, algebraic statistics, integrable systems, configuration spaces of frameworks, biochemical reaction networks, algebraic vision, and tensor decompositions. Conversely, developments on these topics inspire new questions and algorithms for algebraic geometry.

math.AG↗

arXiv2021

Galois/monodromy groups for decomposing minimal problems in 3D reconstruction

We consider Galois/monodromy groups arising in computer vision applications, with a view towards building more efficient polynomial solvers. The Galois/monodromy group allows us to decide when a given problem decomposes into algebraic subproblems, and whether or not it has any symmetries. Tools from numerical algebraic geometry and computational group theory allow us to apply this framework to classical and novel reconstruction problems. We consider three classical cases--3-point absolute pose, 5-point relative pose, and 4-point homography estimation for calibrated cameras--where the decomposition and symmetries may be naturally understood in terms of the Galois/monodromy group. We then show how our framework can be applied to novel problems from absolute and relative pose estimation. For instance, we discover new symmetries for absolute pose problems involving mixtures of point and line features. We also describe a problem of estimating a pair of calibrated homographies between three images. For this problem of degree 64, we can reduce the degree to 16; the latter better reflecting the intrinsic difficulty of algebraically solving the problem. As a byproduct, we obtain new constraints on compatible homographies, which may be of independent interest.

math.AG↗

arXiv2020

Signatures of algebraic curves via numerical algebraic geometry

We apply numerical algebraic geometry to the invariant-theoretic problem of detecting symmetries between two plane algebraic curves. We describe an efficient equality test which determines, with "probability-one", whether or not two rational maps have the same image up to Zariski closure. The application to invariant theory is based on the construction of suitable signature maps associated to a group acting linearly on the respective curves. We consider two versions of this construction: differential and joint signature maps. In our examples and computational experiments, we focus on the complex Euclidean group, and introduce an algebraic joint signature that we prove determines equivalences of curves under this action and the size of a curve's symmetry group. We demonstrate that the test is efficient and use it to empirically compare the sensitivity of differential and joint signatures to different types of noise.

math.AG↗

arXiv2020

Polyhedral Homotopies in Cox Coordinates

We introduce the Cox homotopy algorithm for solving a sparse system of polynomial equations on a compact toric variety $X_Σ$. The algorithm lends its name from a construction, described by Cox, of $X_Σ$ as a GIT quotient $X_Σ= (\mathbb{C}^k \setminus Z) // G$ of a quasi-affine variety by the action of a reductive group. Our algorithm tracks paths in the total coordinate space $\mathbb{C}^k$ of $X_Σ$ and can be seen as a homogeneous version of the standard polyhedral homotopy, which works on the dense torus of $X_Σ$. It furthermore generalizes the commonly used path tracking algorithms in (multi)projective spaces in that it tracks a set of homogeneous coordinates contained in the $G$-orbit corresponding to each solution. The Cox homotopy combines the advantages of polyhedral homotopies and (multi)homogeneous homotopies, tracking only mixed volume many solutions and providing an elegant way to deal with solutions on or near the special divisors of $X_Σ$. In addition, the strategy may help to understand the deficiency of the root count for certain families of systems with respect to the BKK bound.

math.AG↗

arXiv2020

Certification for Polynomial Systems via Square Subsystems

We consider numerical certification of approximate solutions to a system of polynomial equations with more equations than unknowns by first certifying solutions to a square subsystem. We give several approaches that certifiably select which are solutions to the original overdetermined system. These approaches each use different additional information for this certification, such as liaison, Newton-Okounkov bodies, or intersection theory. They may be used to certify individual solutions, reject nonsolutions, or certify that we have found all solutions.

math.AG↗

arXiv2020

PL${}_{1}$P -- Point-line Minimal Problems under Partial Visibility in Three Views

We present a complete classification of minimal problems for generic arrangements of points and lines in space observed partially by three calibrated perspective cameras when each line is incident to at most one point. This is a large class of interesting minimal problems that allows missing observations in images due to occlusions and missed detections. There is an infinite number of such minimal problems; however, we show that they can be reduced to 140616 equivalence classes by removing superfluous features and relabeling the cameras. We also introduce camera-minimal problems, which are practical for designing minimal solvers, and show how to pick a simplest camera-minimal problem for each minimal problem. This simplification results in 74575 equivalence classes. Only 76 of these were known; the rest are new. In order to identify problems that have potential for practical solving of image matching and 3D reconstruction, we present several smaller natural subfamilies of camera-minimal problems as well as compute solution counts for all camera-minimal problems which have less than 300 solutions for generic data.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

PLMP -- Point-Line Minimal Problems in Complete Multi-View Visibility

We present a complete classification of all minimal problems for generic arrangements of points and lines completely observed by calibrated perspective cameras. We show that there are only 30 minimal problems in total, no problems exist for more than 6 cameras, for more than 5 points, and for more than 6 lines. We present a sequence of tests for detecting minimality starting with counting degrees of freedom and ending with full symbolic and numeric verification of representative examples. For all minimal problems discovered, we present their algebraic degrees, i.e. the number of solutions, which measure their intrinsic difficulty. It shows how exactly the difficulty of problems grows with the number of views. Importantly, several new minimal problems have small degrees that might be practical in image matching and 3D reconstruction.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2018

Monodromy Solver: Sequential and Parallel

We describe, study, and experiment with an algorithm for finding all solutions of systems of polynomial equations using homotopy continuation and monodromy. This algorithm follows a framework developed in previous work and can operate in the presence of a large number of failures of the homotopy continuation subroutine. We give special attention to parallelization and probabilistic analysis of a model adapted to parallelization and failures. Apart from theoretical results, we developed a simulator that allows us to run a large number of experiments without recomputing the outcomes of the continuation subroutine.

cs.SC↗

arXiv2018

Solving polynomial systems via homotopy continuation and monodromy

We study methods for finding the solution set of a generic system in a family of polynomial systems with parametric coefficients. We present a framework for describing monodromy based solvers in terms of decorated graphs. Under the theoretical assumption that monodromy actions are generated uniformly, we show that the expected number of homotopy paths tracked by an algorithm following this framework is linear in the number of solutions. We demonstrate that our software implementation is competitive with the existing state-of-the-art methods implemented in other software packages.

math.AG↗

arXiv2013

Robust Graph Ideals

Let I be a toric ideal. We say I is robust if its universal Groebner basis is a minimal generating set. We show that any robust toric ideal arising from a graph G is also minimally generated by its Graver basis. We then completely characterize all graphs which give rise to robust ideals. Our characterization shows that robustness can be determined solely in terms of graph-theoretic conditions on the set of circuits of G.

math.CO↗