Visual Vibrometry: Estimating MaterialProperties from Small Motions in Video
The estimation of material properties is important for scene understanding, with many applications in vision, robotics, andstructural engineering. This paper connects fundamentals of vibration mechanics with computer vision techniques in order to infermaterial properties from small, often imperceptible motions in video. Objects tend to vibrate in a set of preferred modes. Thefrequencies of these modes depend on the structure and material properties of an object. We show that by extracting these frequenciesfrom video of a vibrating object, we can often make inferences about that object’s material properties. We demonstrate our approach byestimating material properties for a variety of objects by observing their motion in high-speed and regular frame rate video.
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