Auto-calibration via the absolute quadric and scene constraints

Abstract

A scheme is described for incorporation of scene constraints into the structure from motion problem. Specifically, the absolute quadric is recovered with constraints imposed by orthogonal scene planes. The scheme involves a number of steps. A projective reconstruction is first obtained, followed by a linear technique to form an initial estimate of the absolute quadric. A nonlinear iteration then refines this quadric and the camera intrinsic parameters to upgrade the projective reconstruction to Euclidean. Finally, a bundle adjustment algorithm optimizes the Euclidean reconstruction to give a statistically optimal result. This chain of algorithms is essentially the same as used in auto-calibration and the novelty of this paper is the inclusion of orthogonal scene plane constraints in each step. The algorithms involved are demonstrated on both simulated and real data showing the performance and usability of the proposed scheme.