Robot Vision: Calibration of Wide-Angle Lens Cameras Using Collinearity Condition and K-Nearest Neighbour Regression

Abstract

Visual perception is regularly used by humans and robots for navigation. By either implicitly or explicitly mapping the environment, ego-motion can be determined and a path of actions can be planned. The process of mapping and navigation are delicately intertwined; therefore, improving one can often lead to an improvement of the other. Both processes are sensitive to the interior orientation parameters of the camera system and mathematically modelling these systematic errors can often improve the precision and accuracy of the overall solution. This paper presents an automatic camera calibration method suitable for any lens, without having prior knowledge about the sensor. Statistical inference is performed to map the environment and localize the camera simultaneously. K-nearest neighbour regression is used to model the geometric distortions of the images. A normal-angle lens Nikon camera and wide-angle lens GoPro camera were calibrated using the proposed method, as well as the conventional bundle adjustment with self-calibration method (for comparison). Results showed that the mapping error was reduced from an average of 14.9 mm to 1.2 mm (i.e. a 92% improvement) and 66.6 mm to 1.5 mm (i.e. a 98% improvement) using the proposed method for the Nikon and GoPro cameras, respectively. In contrast, the conventional approach achieved an average 3D error of 0.9 mm (i.e. 94% improvement) and 3.3 mm (i.e. 95% improvement) for the Nikon and GoPro cameras, respectively. Thus, the proposed method performs well irrespective of the lens/sensor used: it yields results that are comparable to the conventional approach for normal-angle lens cameras, and it has the additional benefit of improving calibration results for wide-angle lens cameras.

The Fine Plane Range Estimation From Point Cloud

“…and the value is again set according to the equation (1). Combination of equations (1), (3) and (4) ensures best levels' distributions in the input data according to their concentrations in analyzed dimension .…”

“…To get more information about the scanned space the additional processing is necessary. Nowadays measurement systems, as Faro Focus 3D, provide detailed and precise point clouds with big amount of measurement points, see [1]. The high memory consumption is not suitable for all systems.…”

The Automatic Undistortion Strength Estimation for Any Describable Optical Distortion

“…The interpolation also filtrates the output image. The research in [6] presents the correction algorithm based on collinearity condition and k-nearest neighbor search. The authors focus especially on wide range field of view (FOV).…”