Estimating parameters of noncentral catadioptric systems using bundle adjustment

This paper describes a new method to calibrate the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of a generalized catadioptric camera (central or non-central) if correspondences between incident lines in space and pixels are provided (black box model calibration) in an arbitrary world reference frame. The parameters calibrated are the intrinsic parameters of the pinhole camera, the coefficients of the mirror expressed by a quadric, the position of optical center of the camera in the world reference frame and its relative orientation. A projection model relaxing Snell’s Law is derived. The deviations from the Snell’s Law and the image reprojection errors are minimized by a bundle adjustment method. Rotations are expressed by quaternions. Simulations and real experiments show good accuracy and robustness for this framework. A well-behaved algorithm to automatically generate the initial guess to be used in the bundle adjustment is also presented.