Technical Report Bundle Adjustment and System Calibration with Points at Infinity for Omnidirectional Cameras

We present a calibration method for multi-view cameras which provides a rigorous maximum-likelihood estimation of the mutual orientation of the cameras within a rigid multi-camera system. No calibration targets are needed just a movement of the multi-camera system taking synchronized images of a high textured and static scene. Multi-camera systems with non-overlapping views have to be rotated within the scene such that corresponding points are visible in different cameras at different times of exposure. By using an extended collinearity equation all estimates can be optimized in one bundle adjustment where we constrain the relative poses of the cameras to be fixed. For stabilizing camera orientations – especially rotations – one should generally use points at the horizon within the bundle adjustment that classical bundle adjustment programs are not capable of. We use a minimal representation of homogeneous coordinates for image and scene points which allows us to use images of omnidirectional cameras with single-view point like fisheye cameras and scene points, which are far away or at infinity. We show results of our calibration method on (1) the omnidirectional multi-camera