The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

The talk describes the Shape-from-Polarimetry (SFP) method, a new passive optical technique that measures the instantaneous slope field of a water surface under natural lighting conditions, from a single camera. The SFP method relates the two-dimensional slope of the water surface within a pixel field-of-view to the change in polarization of skylight reflecting from the surface. For the first time the SFP technique makes it possible to recover the explicit topography of the ocean surface in field conditions. Applications include studying the dynamics of the air-sea interface, microwave interactions with surface waves, and imaging across the air-sea interface. The presentation will include results from a field experiment that include a 3-D reconstruction of surface waves and phase-resolved spectra. In addition, an SFP-based technique of viewing through ocean waves will be presented.