Initialization method for the self-calibration using minimal two images

Abstract

Recently, 3D structure recovery through self-calibration of camera has been actively researched. Traditional calibration algorithm requires known 3D coordinates of the control points while self-calibration only requires the corresponding points of images, thus it has more flexibility in real application. In general, self-calibration algorithm results in the nonlinear optimization problem using constraints from the intrinsic parameters of the camera. Thus, it requires initial value for the nonlinear minimization. Traditional approaches get the initial values assuming they have the same intrinsic parameters while they are dealing with the situation where the intrinsic parameters of the camera may change. In this paper, we propose new initialization method using the minimum 2 images. Proposed method is based on the assumption that the least violation of the camera's intrinsic parameter gives more stable initial value. Synthetic and real experiment shows this result. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.