On pose recovery for generalized visual sensors

With the advances in imaging technologies for robot or machine vision, new imaging devices are being developed for robot navigation or image-based rendering. However, to satisfy some design criterion, such as image resolution or viewing ranges, these devices are not necessarily being designed to follow the perspective rule and, thus, the imaging rays may not pass through a common point. Such generalized imaging devices may not be perspective and, therefore, their poses cannot be estimated with traditional techniques. In this paper, we propose a systematic method for pose estimation of such a generalized imaging device. We formulate it as a nonperspective n point (NPnP) problem. The case with exact solutions, n = 3, is investigated comprehensively. Approximate solutions can be found for n > 3 in a least-squared-error manner by combining an initial-pose-estimation procedure and an orthogonally iterative procedure. This proposed method can be applied not only to nonperspective imaging devices but also perspective ones. Results from experiments show that our approach can solve the NPnP problem accurately.