Flexible Camera Calibration Using a New Analytical Radial Undistortion Formula with Application to Mobile Robot Localization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new polynomial radial distortion model with an analytical undistortion formula, enabling accurate and efficient camera calibration for mobile robot localization.

Contribution

A novel radial distortion model with an analytical undistortion formula that simplifies calibration and improves accuracy in mobile robot applications.

Findings

Achieves satisfactory accuracy in radial distortion correction.

Enables non-iterative line alignment for robot localization.

Demonstrates effectiveness on a mobile robot system.

Abstract

Most algorithms in 3D computer vision rely on the pinhole camera model because of its simplicity, whereas virtually all imaging devices introduce certain amount of nonlinear distortion, where the radial distortion is the most severe part. Common approach to radial distortion is by the means of polynomial approximation, which introduces distortion-specific parameters into the camera model and requires estimation of these distortion parameters. The task of estimating radial distortion is to find a radial distortion model that allows easy undistortion as well as satisfactory accuracy. This paper presents a new radial distortion model with an easy analytical undistortion formula, which also belongs to the polynomial approximation category. Experimental results are presented to show that with this radial distortion model, satisfactory accuracy is achieved. An application of the new radial distortion model is non-iterative yellow line alignment with a calibrated camera on ODIS, a robot built in our CSOIS.