Modeling and Calibration of Variable-Parameter Camera Systems

Summary

Camera systems with adjustable lenses are inherently more useful than those with fixed lenses. Adjustable lenses enable us to produce better images by matching the camera’s sensing characteristics to the conditions in a scene. They also allow us to make measurements by noting how the scene’s image changes as the lens settings are varied. The reason adjustable lenses are not more commonly used in machine vision is that they are difficult to model.

In this chapter we demonstrate how two commonly used camera models — the pinhole camera model and the — cannot be easily extended to cameras with adjustable lenses. We then show how an approach can provide us with accurate models for such systems. We conclude by presenting the problem of camera calibration in the context of a more general top-down philosophy of modeling and calibration.