Pseudo-linearizing collinearity constraint for accurate pose estimation from a single image

The goal of this paper is twofold: firstly, we propose a novel interpretation for collinearity in the process of camera pose estimation from given correspondences between a 3D model and its 2D projective image. In contrast with the existing interpretations for collinearity, the focus of expansion (FOE) theory is a special case of our novel interpretation for collinearity and besides the projection of camera position on the image plane, every image point can become a FOE. Secondly, we propose a novel method, based on the collinearity equation, for camera pose estimation from given point correspondences between a 3D model and its projective image. A comparative study based on both synthetic data and real images has shown that the novel algorithm is promising. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.