On the Multiple-view Triangulation Problem with Perspective and
Non-perspective Cameras
A Virtual Reprojection-based Approach
Graziano Chesi
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
Keywords:
Vision System, Multiple-view, Perspective Camera, Non-perspective Camera, Triangulation.
Abstract:
This paper considers the multiple-view triangulation problem in a vision system with perspective and non-
perspective cameras. In particular, cameras that can be modeled through a spherical projection followed by
a perspective one, such as perspective cameras and fisheye cameras, are considered. For this problem, an
approach based on reprojecting the available image points onto virtual image planes is proposed, which has
the advantage of transforming the original problem into a new one for which the existing methods for multiple-
view triangulation with perspective cameras can be used. In particular, algebraic and geometric errors of such
methods are now evaluated on the virtual image planes, and the solution of the new problem exactly approaches
the sought scene point as image noise and calibration errors tend to zero. The proposed approach is illustrated
by several numerical investigations with synthetic and real data.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is well-known that the multiple-view triangulation
problem is of fundamental importance in computer vi-
sion and robotics. Specifically, this problem consists
of recovering a scene point from its available image
projections on two or more cameras located in the
scene. Unfortunately, due to image noise and cali-
bration errors, this process generally provides an esti-
mate only of the sought point, which depends on the
criterion chosen to match the available image points
with the image projections of the estimate on all the
cameras. The multiple-view triangulation problem
has numerous key applications, such as 3D object re-
construction, map estimation, and visual servo con-
trol, see for instance (Hartley and Zisserman, 2000;
Faugeras and Luong, 2001; Chesi and Vicino, 2004;
Chesi and Hung, 2007).
The multiple-viewtriangulation problemwith per-
spective cameras has been studied for a long time,
and numerous contributions can be found in the lit-
erature. Pioneering contributions have considered the
minimization of algebraic errors for defining the esti-
mate of the sought point, since the resulting optimiza-
tion problems can be solved via linear least-squares,
while later contributions have proposed the minimiza-
tion of geometric errors since they can generally pro-
vide more accurate estimates, see for instance (Hart-
ley and Zisserman, 2000) about the definition of al-
gebraic and geometric errors. A commonly adopted
geometric error is the L2 norm of the reprojection er-
ror, for which several solutions have been proposed.
In (Hartley and Sturm, 1997; Hartley and Zisserman,
2000), the authors show how the exact solution of tri-
angulation with two views can be obtained by com-
puting the roots of a one-variable polynomial of de-
gree six. For triangulation with three views, the ex-
act solution is obtained in (Stewenius et al., 2005)
by solving a system of polynomial equations through
methods from computational commutative algebra,
and in (Byrod et al., 2007) through Groebner basis
techniques. Multiple-view triangulation is considered
also in (Lu and Hartley, 2007) via branch-and-bound
algorithms, and in (Chesi and Hung, 2011) via convex
programming. Other geometric errors include the in-
finity norm of the reprojection error, see for instance
(Hartley and Schaffalitzky, 2004).
This paper considers the multiple-view triangula-
tion problem in a vision system with perspective and
non-perspective cameras, hereafter simply denoted as
generalized cameras. In particular, cameras that can
be modeled through a spherical projection followed
by a perspective one, such as perspective cameras
and fisheye cameras, are considered by exploiting a
unified camera model. An approach based on repro-
jecting the available image points onto virtual image
5
Chesi G..
On the Multiple-view Triangulation Problem with Perspective and Non-perspective Cameras - A Virtual Reprojection-based Approach.
DOI: 10.5220/0003981300050013
In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO-2012), pages 5-13
ISBN: 978-989-8565-22-8
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)