3D Camera Calibration

Time-of-flight (TOF) cameras based on the Photomixing Detector (PMD) technology are capable of measuring distances to objects at high frame rates, making them valuable for many applications in robotics and computer vision. The distance measurements they provide, however, are affected by many factors, systematic and otherwise, incurring the need for calibrating them. This paper presents a technique for calibrating PMD cameras, in which we extend a recently-proposed calibration technique [Fuchs and May, 2007] to include intensity-related errors in depth measurement. Our model accounts for three major sources of error: the circular error resulting from the signal modulation process, the signal propagation delay, and the intensity-related error. Our experimental results confirm the advantage of considering the intensityrelated factors in the calibration process.