Vision and the Atmosphere

Current vision systems are designed to perform in clear weather. Needless to say, in any outdoor application, there is no escape from "bad" weather. Ultimately, computer vision systems must include mechanisms that enable them to function (even if somewhat less reliably) in the presence of haze, fog, rain, hail and snow. We begin by studying the visual manifestations of different weather conditions. For this, we draw on what is already known about atmospheric optics, and identify effects caused by bad weather that can be turned to our advantage. Since the atmosphere modulates the information carried from a scene point to the observer, it can be viewed as a mechanism of visual information coding. We exploit two fundamental scattering models and develop methods for recovering pertinent scene properties, such as three-dimensional structure, from one or two images taken under poor weather conditions. Next, we model the chromatic effects of the atmospheric scattering and verify it ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: IJCV
• Authors: Srinivasa G. Narasimhan, Shree K. Nayar
• Keywords: IJCV 2002, Vision Systems, Weather, Weather Conditions