Minimal solutions for generic imaging models

A generic imaging model refers to a non-parametric camera model where every camera is treated as a set of unconstrained projection rays. Calibration would simply be a method to map the projection rays to image pixels; such a mapping can be computed using plane based calibration grids. However, existing algorithms for generic calibration use more point correspondences than the theoretical minimum. It has been well-established that non-minimal solutions for calibration and structure-from-motion algorithms are generally noise-prone compared to minimal solutions. In this work we derive minimal solutions for generic calibration algorithms. Our algorithms for generally central cameras use 4 point correspondences in three calibration grids to compute the motion between the grids. Using simulations we show that our minimal solutions are more robust to noise compared to non-minimal solutions. We also show very accurate distortion correction results on fisheye images.