Accurate multi-viewpoint stereo measurement using nonlinear optimization method

An estimation method is presented for accurately determining the relationship between viewpoints and object positions simultaneously by integrating stereo data from multi-viewpoints whose relationship is unknown. With this method both the relationship and the object positions are estimated by minimizing the sum of square errors in the image coordinates. The calculation is performed with the nonlinear optimization method because the multi-viewpoint stereo measurement system is a nonlinear system. Therefore, this method can be applied to an arbitrary multi-viewpoint stereo measurement system, whereas almost all conventional methods can only be applied to linear cases. A simulation is used to investigate the influence of the relative viewpoint position parameters on the accuracy with which object positions are determined in a three viewpoint stereo measurement. The effectiveness of this method is confirmed experimentally by actual outdoor measurements