3D reconstruction with mirrors and RGB-D cameras

RGB-D cameras such as Microsoft´s Kinect have found many application areas in robotics, 3D modelling and indoor vision due to their low-costs and ease of use. 3D reconstruction with RGB-D cameras is relatively more convenient because they provide RGB and depth data simultaneously for each image element. However, for a full 3D reconstruction of a scene, a single fixed RGB-D camera is inadequate and using multiple cameras brings many challenges with them, such as bandwidth limitations and synchronization. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a solution that employs mirrors to introduce virtual RGB-D cameras into the system. The proposed system does not have any space limitations, data bandwidth constraints, synchronization problems and it is cheaper because we do not require extra cameras. We develop formulations for the simultaneous calibration of real and virtual RGB and RGB-D cameras and we also provide methods for 3D reconstruction from these cameras. We conduct several experiments to assess our system; numerical and visual results are found satisfying.