A Plane-based Calibration for Multi-camera Systems

In this paper, a plane-based calibration algorithm with use for calibrating large complexes of linear projective cameras of varying intrinsic and extrinsic parameters is proposed. A planar pattern with known reference points placed at a few different locations is only required as a calibration object. All the cameras do not have to see this planar pattern at all locations simultaneously, and only reasonable overlap between them is necessary. We divide these cameras into groups according to their positions and orientations, to make sure cameras in each group have a common field of view, and estimate the intrinsic parameters of each camera via a plane-based technique. Common views of planes are used to represent each camera in the world coordinate system of its own group and determine the relationships between these world coordinate systems. Rodrigues formula is adopted to deal with the inconsistency when recovering the rigid displacements between cameras. At last, all these cameras can be completely calibrated in a uniform world coordinate system robustly and accurately.