Perception

Epipolar Geometry

Epipolar Geometry is the intrinsic projective geometry relating two views of the same scene, encoded by the essential matrix for calibrated cameras and the fundamental matrix otherwise. A point in one image constrains its correspondence in the other to a line, the epipolar line, reducing stereo matching from a 2D to a 1D search. The essential matrix decomposes into the relative rotation and translation between cameras, the basis of two-view structure from motion.

Why it matters for physical AI

Stereo depth, visual odometry, and multi-camera calibration on robots all rest on epipolar constraints, and they remain the geometric consistency check applied to learned correspondence and pose estimators.