64,399 research outputs found
Calibration by correlation using metric embedding from non-metric similarities
This paper presents a new intrinsic calibration method that allows us to calibrate a generic single-view point camera just
by waving it around. From the video sequence obtained while the camera undergoes random motion, we compute the pairwise time
correlation of the luminance signal for a subset of the pixels. We show that, if the camera undergoes a random uniform motion, then
the pairwise correlation of any pixels pair is a function of the distance between the pixel directions on the visual sphere. This leads to
formalizing calibration as a problem of metric embedding from non-metric measurements: we want to find the disposition of pixels on
the visual sphere from similarities that are an unknown function of the distances. This problem is a generalization of multidimensional
scaling (MDS) that has so far resisted a comprehensive observability analysis (can we reconstruct a metrically accurate embedding?)
and a solid generic solution (how to do so?). We show that the observability depends both on the local geometric properties (curvature)
as well as on the global topological properties (connectedness) of the target manifold. We show that, in contrast to the Euclidean case,
on the sphere we can recover the scale of the points distribution, therefore obtaining a metrically accurate solution from non-metric
measurements. We describe an algorithm that is robust across manifolds and can recover a metrically accurate solution when the metric
information is observable. We demonstrate the performance of the algorithm for several cameras (pin-hole, fish-eye, omnidirectional),
and we obtain results comparable to calibration using classical methods. Additional synthetic benchmarks show that the algorithm
performs as theoretically predicted for all corner cases of the observability analysis
Hand gesture recognition with jointly calibrated Leap Motion and depth sensor
Novel 3D acquisition devices like depth cameras and the Leap Motion have recently reached the market. Depth cameras allow to obtain a complete 3D description of the framed scene while the Leap Motion sensor is a device explicitly targeted for hand gesture recognition and provides only a limited set of relevant points. This paper shows how to jointly exploit the two types of sensors for accurate gesture recognition. An ad-hoc solution for the joint calibration of the two devices is firstly presented. Then a set of novel feature descriptors is introduced both for the Leap Motion and for depth data. Various schemes based on the distances of the hand samples from the centroid, on the curvature of the hand contour and on the convex hull of the hand shape are employed and the use of Leap Motion data to aid feature extraction is also considered. The proposed feature sets are fed to two different classifiers, one based on multi-class SVMs and one exploiting Random Forests. Different feature selection algorithms have also been tested in order to reduce the complexity of the approach. Experimental results show that a very high accuracy can be obtained from the proposed method. The current implementation is also able to run in real-time
Calibration Wizard: A Guidance System for Camera Calibration Based on Modelling Geometric and Corner Uncertainty
It is well known that the accuracy of a calibration depends strongly on the
choice of camera poses from which images of a calibration object are acquired.
We present a system -- Calibration Wizard -- that interactively guides a user
towards taking optimal calibration images. For each new image to be taken, the
system computes, from all previously acquired images, the pose that leads to
the globally maximum reduction of expected uncertainty on intrinsic parameters
and then guides the user towards that pose. We also show how to incorporate
uncertainty in corner point position in a novel principled manner, for both,
calibration and computation of the next best pose. Synthetic and real-world
experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of Calibration
Wizard.Comment: Oral presentation at ICCV 201
Building with Drones: Accurate 3D Facade Reconstruction using MAVs
Automatic reconstruction of 3D models from images using multi-view
Structure-from-Motion methods has been one of the most fruitful outcomes of
computer vision. These advances combined with the growing popularity of Micro
Aerial Vehicles as an autonomous imaging platform, have made 3D vision tools
ubiquitous for large number of Architecture, Engineering and Construction
applications among audiences, mostly unskilled in computer vision. However, to
obtain high-resolution and accurate reconstructions from a large-scale object
using SfM, there are many critical constraints on the quality of image data,
which often become sources of inaccuracy as the current 3D reconstruction
pipelines do not facilitate the users to determine the fidelity of input data
during the image acquisition. In this paper, we present and advocate a
closed-loop interactive approach that performs incremental reconstruction in
real-time and gives users an online feedback about the quality parameters like
Ground Sampling Distance (GSD), image redundancy, etc on a surface mesh. We
also propose a novel multi-scale camera network design to prevent scene drift
caused by incremental map building, and release the first multi-scale image
sequence dataset as a benchmark. Further, we evaluate our system on real
outdoor scenes, and show that our interactive pipeline combined with a
multi-scale camera network approach provides compelling accuracy in multi-view
reconstruction tasks when compared against the state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 8 Pages, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA '15), Seattle, WA, US
Encoderless Gimbal Calibration of Dynamic Multi-Camera Clusters
Dynamic Camera Clusters (DCCs) are multi-camera systems where one or more
cameras are mounted on actuated mechanisms such as a gimbal. Existing methods
for DCC calibration rely on joint angle measurements to resolve the
time-varying transformation between the dynamic and static camera. This
information is usually provided by motor encoders, however, joint angle
measurements are not always readily available on off-the-shelf mechanisms. In
this paper, we present an encoderless approach for DCC calibration which
simultaneously estimates the kinematic parameters of the transformation chain
as well as the unknown joint angles. We also demonstrate the integration of an
encoderless gimbal mechanism with a state-of-the art VIO algorithm, and show
the extensions required in order to perform simultaneous online estimation of
the joint angles and vehicle localization state. The proposed calibration
approach is validated both in simulation and on a physical DCC composed of a
2-DOF gimbal mounted on a UAV. Finally, we show the experimental results of the
calibrated mechanism integrated into the OKVIS VIO package, and demonstrate
successful online joint angle estimation while maintaining localization
accuracy that is comparable to a standard static multi-camera configuration.Comment: ICRA 201
Fast and Reliable Autonomous Surgical Debridement with Cable-Driven Robots Using a Two-Phase Calibration Procedure
Automating precision subtasks such as debridement (removing dead or diseased
tissue fragments) with Robotic Surgical Assistants (RSAs) such as the da Vinci
Research Kit (dVRK) is challenging due to inherent non-linearities in
cable-driven systems. We propose and evaluate a novel two-phase coarse-to-fine
calibration method. In Phase I (coarse), we place a red calibration marker on
the end effector and let it randomly move through a set of open-loop
trajectories to obtain a large sample set of camera pixels and internal robot
end-effector configurations. This coarse data is then used to train a Deep
Neural Network (DNN) to learn the coarse transformation bias. In Phase II
(fine), the bias from Phase I is applied to move the end-effector toward a
small set of specific target points on a printed sheet. For each target, a
human operator manually adjusts the end-effector position by direct contact
(not through teleoperation) and the residual compensation bias is recorded.
This fine data is then used to train a Random Forest (RF) to learn the fine
transformation bias. Subsequent experiments suggest that without calibration,
position errors average 4.55mm. Phase I can reduce average error to 2.14mm and
the combination of Phase I and Phase II can reduces average error to 1.08mm. We
apply these results to debridement of raisins and pumpkin seeds as fragment
phantoms. Using an endoscopic stereo camera with standard edge detection,
experiments with 120 trials achieved average success rates of 94.5%, exceeding
prior results with much larger fragments (89.4%) and achieving a speedup of
2.1x, decreasing time per fragment from 15.8 seconds to 7.3 seconds. Source
code, data, and videos are available at
https://sites.google.com/view/calib-icra/.Comment: Code, data, and videos are available at
https://sites.google.com/view/calib-icra/. Final version for ICRA 201
Visual-inertial self-calibration on informative motion segments
Environmental conditions and external effects, such as shocks, have a
significant impact on the calibration parameters of visual-inertial sensor
systems. Thus long-term operation of these systems cannot fully rely on factory
calibration. Since the observability of certain parameters is highly dependent
on the motion of the device, using short data segments at device initialization
may yield poor results. When such systems are additionally subject to energy
constraints, it is also infeasible to use full-batch approaches on a big
dataset and careful selection of the data is of high importance. In this paper,
we present a novel approach for resource efficient self-calibration of
visual-inertial sensor systems. This is achieved by casting the calibration as
a segment-based optimization problem that can be run on a small subset of
informative segments. Consequently, the computational burden is limited as only
a predefined number of segments is used. We also propose an efficient
information-theoretic selection to identify such informative motion segments.
In evaluations on a challenging dataset, we show our approach to significantly
outperform state-of-the-art in terms of computational burden while maintaining
a comparable accuracy
Monitoring wild animal communities with arrays of motion sensitive camera traps
Studying animal movement and distribution is of critical importance to
addressing environmental challenges including invasive species, infectious
diseases, climate and land-use change. Motion sensitive camera traps offer a
visual sensor to record the presence of a broad range of species providing
location -specific information on movement and behavior. Modern digital camera
traps that record video present new analytical opportunities, but also new data
management challenges. This paper describes our experience with a terrestrial
animal monitoring system at Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Our camera network
captured the spatio-temporal dynamics of terrestrial bird and mammal activity
at the site - data relevant to immediate science questions, and long-term
conservation issues. We believe that the experience gained and lessons learned
during our year long deployment and testing of the camera traps as well as the
developed solutions are applicable to broader sensor network applications and
are valuable for the advancement of the sensor network research. We suggest
that the continued development of these hardware, software, and analytical
tools, in concert, offer an exciting sensor-network solution to monitoring of
animal populations which could realistically scale over larger areas and time
spans
- âŠ