Robust and Accurate Multiple-Camera Pose Estimation toward Robotic Applications

Abstract

Pose estimation methods in robotics applications frequently suffer from inaccuracy due to a lack of correspondence and real-time constraints, and instability from a wide range of viewpoints, etc. In this paper, we present a novel approach for estimating the poses of all the cameras in a multi-camera system in which each camera is placed rigidly using only a few coplanar points simultaneously. Instead of solving the orientation and translation for the multi-camera system from the overlapping point correspondences among all the cameras directly, we employ homography, which can map image points with 3D coplanar-referenced points. In our method, we first establish the corresponding relations between each camera by their Euclidean geometries and optimize the homographies of the cameras; then, we solve the orientation and translation for the optimal homographies. The results from simulations and real case experiments show that our approach is accurate and robust for implementation in robotics applications. Finally, a practical implementation in a ping-pong robot is described in order to confirm the validity of our approach.