Efficient Recovery of Essential Matrix From Two Affine Correspondences

We propose a method to estimate the essential matrix using two affine correspondences for a pair of calibrated perspective cameras. Two novel, linear constraints are derived between the essential matrix and a local affine transformation. The proposed method is also applicable to the over-determined case. We extend the normalization technique of Hartley to local affinities and show how the intrinsic camera matrices modify them. Even though perspective cameras are assumed, the constraints can straightforwardly be generalized to arbitrary camera models since they describe the relationship between local affinities and epipolar lines (or curves). Benefiting from the low number of exploited points, it can be used in robust estimators, e.g. RANSAC, as an engine, thus leading to significantly less iterations than the traditional point-based methods. The algorithm is validated both on synthetic and publicly available data sets and compared with the state-of-the-art. Its applicability is demonstrated on two-view multi-motion fitting, i.e., finding multiple fundamental matrices simultaneously, and outlier rejection.