The Quadrifocal Variety

Multi-view Geometry is reviewed from an Algebraic Geometry perspective and multi-focal tensors are constructed as equivariant projections of the Grassmannian. A connection to the principal minor assignment problem is made by considering several flatlander cameras. The ideal of the quadrifocal variety is computed up to degree 8 (and partially in degree 9) using the representations of $\operatorname{GL}(3)^{\times 4}$ in the polynomial ring on the space of $3 \times 3 \times 3 \times 3$ tensors. Further representation-theoretic analysis gives a lower bound for the number of minimal generators. We conjecture that the ideal of the quadrifocal variety is minimally generated in degree at most 9.