Highly specific pose estimation with a catadioptric omnidirectional camera

This article presents a new method for estimating the pose of para-catadioptric vision systems. It is based on the estimation of vanishing points associated with vertical edges of the environment. However, unlike classical approaches no feature (line, circle) extraction and/or identification is needed. A sampled domain of possible vanishing points is tested and histograms are build to characterize the soundness of these points. A specificity index allows to find the more relevant histogram and the pose of the sensor. This method has been tested on simulated and real images giving very promising results (maximum angular error of 0.18 degree).