Stereo vision with arbitrary camera arrangement and with camera calibration

✍ Scribed by Hiroshi Kano; Takeo Kanade

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 387 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0882-1666
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-684x(199802)29:2<47::aid-scj6>3.0.co;2-q

✦ Synopsis

Essential problems in stereo vision include the search for corresponding points in stereo pairs and the calibration of stereo cameras. The search for corresponding points can be performed by means of so-called epipolar lines, but geometric conditions become complicated in case of arbitrary arrangement of camera viewpoints and orientations. This study shows that extraction of candidates for corresponding points can be easily described by means of a projective transformation from the base camera image to inspection camera image, using several virtual planes in three-dimensional space. Based on this approach, a method of calibration for stereo cameras is proposed that involves interpolation/extrapolation of a series of projective transformation matrices when observing two planes in a scene. The proposed calibration method is extremely simple because no special calibration pattern is required and the camera parameters need not be determined explicitly. Furthermore, better accuracy is achieved in comparison with previous calibration methods using the pinhole camera model.