A study on the camera calibration parameters estimation using the perspective variation ratio

With 3-D vision measuring, camera calibration is necessary to calculate parameters accurately. Camera calibration was developed widely in two categories. The first establishes reference points in space, and the second uses a grid type frame and statistical method. But, the former has difficulty to setup reference points and the latter has low accuracy. In this paper we present an algorithm for camera calibration using perspective ratio of the grid type frame with different line widths. It can easily estimate camera calibration parameters such as lens distortion, focal length, scale factor, pose, orientations, and distance. The advantage of this algorithm is that it can estimate the distance of the object. Also, the proposed camera calibration method is possible estimate distance in dynamic environment such as autonomous navigation. To validate proposed method, we set up the experiments with a frame on rotator at a distance of 1, 2, 3, 4[m] from camera and rotate the frame from -60 to 60 degrees. Both computer simulation and real data have been used to test the proposed method and very good results have been obtained. We have investigated the distance error affected by scale factor or different line widths and experimentally found an average scale factor that includes the least distance error with each image. The average scale factor tends to fluctuate with small variation and makes distance error decrease. Compared with classical methods that use stereo camera or two or three orthogonal planes, the proposed method is easy to use and flexible. It advances camera calibration one more step from static environments to real world such as autonomous land vehicle use.