Accurate Catadioptric Calibration for Real-Time Pose Estimation in Room-Size Environments

Omnidirectional video cameras are becoming increasingly popular in computer vision. One family of these cameras uses a parabolodial mirror and lens setup (catadioptric system) to produce an omindirectional image with a single center-of-projection. In this paper, we relax the assumption of an ideal parabolodial catadioptric system and present an improved calibration model, which we combine with a beacom-based pose estimation algorithm. Our complete standalone system, placed on a radio-controlled motorized cart, moves in a room-size environment, capturing high-resolution frames to disk and recovering camera pose with an average error of 0.56% in a region 15 feet in diameter.