Auto-Calibrating Projectors for Tiled Displays On Piecewise Smooth Vertically Extruded Surfaces

In this paper we present a novel technique to calibrate multiple casually aligned projectors on fiducial-free piecewise smooth vertically extruded surfaces using a single camera. Such surfaces include cylindrical displays and CAVEs, common in immersive virtual reality systems. We impose two priors to the display surface. We assume the surface is a piecewise smooth vertically extruded surface for which the aspect ratio of the rectangle formed by the four corners of the surface is known and the boundary is visible and segmentable. Using these priors, we can estimate the display’s 3D geometry and camera extrinsic parameters using a non-linear optimization technique from a single image without any explicit display to camera correspondences. Using the estimated camera and display properties, the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of each projector is recovered using a single projected pattern seen by the camera. This in turn is used to register the images on the display from any arbitrary viewpoint making it appropriate for virtual reality systems. The fast convergence and robustness of this method is achieved via a novel dimension reduction technique for camera parameter estimation and a novel deterministic technique for projector property estimation. This simplicity, efficiency and robustness of our method enables several coveted features for non-planar projection based displays. First, it allows fast re-calibration in the face of projector, display or camera movements and even change in display shape. Second, this opens up, for the first time, the possibility of allowing multiple projectors to overlap on the corners of the CAVE – a popular immersive VR display system. Finally, this opens up the possibility of easily deploying multi-projector displays on aesthetic novel shapes for edutainment and digital signage applications.