Extrinisic Calibration of a Camera-Arm System Through Rotation Identification

Determining extrinsic calibration parameters is a necessity in any robotic system composed of actuators and cameras. Once a system is outside the lab environment, parameters must be determined without relying on outside artifacts such as calibration targets. We propose a method that relies on structured motion of an observed arm to recover extrinsic calibration parameters. Our method combines known arm kinematics with observations of conics in the image plane to calculate maximum-likelihood estimates for calibration extrinsics. This method is validated in simulation and tested against a real-world model, yielding results consistent with ruler-based estimates. Our method shows promise for estimating the pose of a camera relative to an articulated arm's end effector without requiring tedious measurements or external artifacts. Index Terms: robotics, hand-eye problem, self-calibration, structure from motio

Relating vanishing points to catadioptric camera calibration

This paper presents the analysis and derivation of the geometric relation between vanishing points and camera parameters of central catadioptric camera systems. These vanishing points correspond to the three mutually orthogonal directions of 3D real world coordinate system (i.e. X, Y and Z axes). Compared to vanishing points (VPs) in the perspective projection, the advantages of VPs under central catadioptric projection are that there are normally two vanishing points for each set of parallel lines, since lines are projected to conics in the catadioptric image plane. Also, their vanishing points are usually located inside the image frame. We show that knowledge of the VPs corresponding to XYZ axes from a single image can lead to simple derivation of both intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the central catadioptric system. This derived novel theory is demonstrated and tested on both synthetic and real data with respect to noise sensitivity

Linear pose estimate from corresponding conics

We propose here a new method to recover the orientation and position of a plane by matching at least three projections of a conic lying on the plane itself. The procedure is based on rearranging the conic projection equations such that the non linear terms are eliminated. It works with any kind of conic and does not require that the shape of the conic is known a-priori. The method was extensively tested using ellipses, but it can also be used for hyperbolas and parabolas. It was further applied to pairs of lines, which can be viewed as a degenerate case of hyperbola, without requiring the correspondence problem to be solved first. Critical configurations and numerical stability have been analyzed through simulations. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm was compared to that of traditional algorithms and of a trinocular vision system using a set of landmarks

Geometric Properties of Central Catadioptric Line Images and Their Application in Calibration

In central catadioptric systems, lines in a scene are projected to conic curves in the image. This work studies the geometry of the central catadioptric projection of lines and its use in calibration. It is shown that the conic curves where the lines are mapped possess several projective invariant properties. From these properties, it follows that any central catadioptric system can be fully calibrated from an image of three or more lines. The image of the absolute conic, the relative pose between the camera and the mirror, and the shape of the reflective surface can be recovered using a geometric construction based on the conic loci where the lines are projected. This result is valid for any central catadioptric system and generalizes previous results for paracatadioptric sensors. Moreover, it is proven that systems with a hyperbolic/elliptical mirror can be calibrated from the image of two lines. If both the shape and the pose of the mirror are known, then two line images are enough to determine the image of the absolute conic encoding the camera’s intrinsic parameters. The sensitivity to errors is evaluated and the approach is used to calibrate a real camer

Understanding fast macroscale fracture from microcrack post mortem patterns

Dynamic crack propagation drives catastrophic solid failures. In many amorphous brittle materials, sufficiently fast crack growth involves small-scale, high-frequency microcracking damage localized near the crack tip. The ultra-fast dynamics of microcrack nucleation, growth and coalescence is inaccessible experimentally and fast crack propagation was therefore studied only as a macroscale average. Here, we overcome this limitation in polymethylmethacrylate, the archetype of brittle amorphous materials: We reconstruct the complete spatio-temporal microcracking dynamics, with micrometer / nanosecond resolution, through post mortem analysis of the fracture surfaces. We find that all individual microcracks propagate at the same low, load-independent, velocity. Collectively, the main effect of microcracks is not to slow down fracture by increasing the energy required for crack propagation, as commonly believed, but on the contrary to boost the macroscale velocity through an acceleration factor selected on geometric grounds. Our results emphasize the key role of damage-related internal variables in the selection of macroscale fracture dynamics.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures + supporting information (15 pages

On a discretization of confocal quadrics. I. An integrable systems approach

Confocal quadrics lie at the heart of the system of confocal coordinates (also called elliptic coordinates, after Jacobi). We suggest a discretization which respects two crucial properties of confocal coordinates: separability and all two-dimensional coordinate subnets being isothermic surfaces (that is, allowing a conformal parametrization along curvature lines, or, equivalently, supporting orthogonal Koenigs nets). Our construction is based on an integrable discretization of the Euler-Poisson-Darboux equation and leads to discrete nets with the separability property, with all two-dimensional subnets being Koenigs nets, and with an additional novel discrete analog of the orthogonality property. The coordinate functions of our discrete nets are given explicitly in terms of gamma functions.Comment: 37 pp., 9 figures. V2 is a completely reworked and extended version, with a lot of new materia

Reconstruction of surface of revolution from multiple uncalibrated views: a bundle-adjustment approach

This paper addresses the problem of recovering the 3D shape of a surface of revolution from multiple uncalibrated perspective views. In previous work, we have exploited the invariant properties of the surface of revolution and its silhouette to recover the contour generator and hence the meridian of the surface of revolution from a single uncalibrated view. However, there exists one degree of freedom in the reconstruction which corresponds to the unknown orientation of the revolution axis of the surface of revolution. In this paper, such an ambiguity is removed by estimating the horizon, again, using the image invariants associated with the surface of revolution. A bundle-adjustment approach is then proposed to provide an optimal estimate of the meridian when multiple uncalibrated views of the same surface of revolution are available. Experimental results on real images are presented, which demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.postprintThe 6th Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV 2004), Jeju, Korea, 27-30 January 2004. In Proceedings of the 6th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, 2004, v. 1, p. 378-38