Automatic scene structure and camera motion using a catadioptric system

Fully automatic methods are presented for the estimation of scene structure and camera motion from an image sequence acquired by a catadioptric system. The first contribution is the design of bundle adjustments for both central and non-central models, by taking care of the smoothness of the minimized error functions. The second contribution is an extensive experimental study for long sequences of catadioptric images in a context useful for applications: a hand-held and equiangular camera moving on the ground. An equiangular camera is non-central and provides uniform resolution in the image radial direction. Many experiments dealing with robustness, accuracy, uncertainty, comparisons between both central and non-central models, and piecewise planar 3D modeling are provided. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.