Multi-Camera Calibration with One-Dimensional Object under General Motions

It is well known that in order to calibrate a single camera with a one-dimensional (1D) calibration object, the object must undertake some constrained motions, in other words, it is impossible to calibrate a single camera if the object motion is of general one. For a multi-camera setup, i.e., when the number of camera is more than one, can the cameras be calibrated by a 1D object under general motions? In this work, we prove that all cameras can indeed be calibrated and a calibration algorithm is also proposed and experimentally tested. In contrast to other multi-camera calibration method, no one calibrated "base" camera is needed. In addition, we show that for such multi-camera cases, the minimum condition of calibration and critical motions are similar to those of calibrating a single camera with 1D calibration object.