Ozery, Nissim Jossef.

This thesis studies the 2-D-based visual invariant that exists during relative motion between a camera and a 3-D object. We show that during fixation there is a measurable nonlinear function of optical flow that produces the same value for all points of a stationary environment regardless of the 3-D shape of the environment. During fixated camera motion relative to a rigid object, e.g., a stationary environment, the projection of the fixated point remains (by definition) at the same location in the image, and all other points located on the 3-D rigid object can only rotate relative to that 3-D fixation point. This rotation rate of the points is invariant for all points that lie on the particular environment, and it is measurable from a sequence of images. This new invariant is obtained from a set of monocular images and is expressed explicitly as a closed form solution.