[Paper] Automatic Calibration of an in-Vehicle Camera based on Structure from Motion

Abstract

In this article, we propose a novel method to automatically estimates camera posture parameters of an in-vehicle camera unit. Several methods have already been proposed which estimate those parameters mainly relying on known texture patterns on the ground (e.g. like road signs, lane markers). Unlike conventional methods, our method achieves camera calibration without given texture patterns, by using the camera trajectory estimated by Structure from Motion (SfM) as a clue. As another contribution, we have evaluated the effectiveness of multiple techniques that are empirically known to improve the robustness and accuracy of SfM but have not been well discussed in the literature. In an experiment, we show that the pose parameters can automatically be estimated in the real driving environments, and the results from the proposed and compared methods are quantitatively evaluated.