The Rank of Trifocal Grassmann Tensors

Abstract

Grassmann tensors arise from classical problems of scene reconstruction in computer vision. Trifocal Grassmann tensors, related to three projections from a projective space of dimension k onto view-spaces of varying dimensions are studied in this work. A canonical form for the combined projection matrices is obtained. When the centers of projections satisfy a natural generality assumption, such canonical form gives a closed formula for the rank of the trifocal Grassmann tensors. The same approach is also applied to the case of two projections, confirming a previous result obtained with different methods in [6]. The rank of sequences of tensors converging to tensors associated with degenerate configurations of projection centers is also considered, giving concrete examples of a wide spectrum of phenomena that can happen.