Camera calibration and light source orientation from solar shadows

In this paper, we describe a method for recovering camera parameters from perspective views of daylight shadows in a scene, given only minimal geometric information determined from the images. This minimal information consists of two 3D stationary points and their cast shadows on the ground plane. We show that this information captured in two views is sufficient to determine the focal length, the aspect ratio, and the principal point of a pinhole camera with fixed intrinsic parameters. In addition, we are also able to compute the orientation of the light source. Our method is based on exploiting novel inter-image constraints on the image of the absolute conic and the physical properties of solar shadows. Compared to the traditional methods that require images of some precisely machined calibration patterns, our method uses cast shadows by the sun, which are common in natural environments, and requires no measurements of any distance or angle in the 3D world. To demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed algorithm and its utility, we present the results on both synthetic and real images, and apply the method to an image-based rendering problem.

[1]  Hui Zhang,et al.  Camera calibration with spheres: linear approaches , 2005, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 2005.

[2]  Reinhard Koch,et al.  Self-Calibration and Metric Reconstruction Inspite of Varying and Unknown Intrinsic Camera Parameters , 1999, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[3]  Adam Finkelstein,et al.  Shadows for cel animation , 2000, SIGGRAPH.

[4]  Bernhard P. Wrobel,et al.  Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision , 2001 .

[5]  Ian D. Reid,et al.  Single View Metrology , 2000, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[6]  Ramakant Nevatia,et al.  Detection of buildings using perceptual grouping and shadows , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[7]  Larry S. Davis,et al.  A Robust Background Subtraction and Shadow Detection , 1999 .

[8]  Luc Van Gool,et al.  Planar homologies as a basis for grouping and recognition , 1998, Image Vis. Comput..

[9]  Xiaochun Cao,et al.  Single view compositing with shadows , 2005, The Visual Computer.

[10]  David J. Kriegman,et al.  What shadows reveal about object structure. , 2001 .

[11]  Ian D. Reid,et al.  3D Trajectories from a Single Viewpoint using Shadows , 1998, BMVC.

[12]  Hirohisa Teramoto,et al.  Camera Calibration by a Single Image of Balls: From Conics to the Absolute Conic , 2002 .

[13]  O. Faugeras,et al.  The Geometry of Multiple Images , 1999 .

[14]  L. Davis,et al.  Complete camera calibration using spheres : A dual-space approach , 2002 .

[15]  Sing Bing Kang,et al.  Can We Calibrate a Camera Using an Image of a Flat, Textureless Lambertian Surface? , 2000, ECCV.

[16]  Pietro Perona,et al.  3D photography on your desk , 1998, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36271).

[17]  Paulo R. S. Mendonça,et al.  Bayesian autocalibration for surveillance , 2005, Tenth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'05) Volume 1.

[18]  Mohan M. Trivedi,et al.  Moving shadow and object detection in traffic scenes , 2000, Proceedings 15th International Conference on Pattern Recognition. ICPR-2000.

[19]  Janne Heikkilä,et al.  Geometric Camera Calibration Using Circular Control Points , 2000, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[20]  Michael Bosse,et al.  Calibration of outdoor cameras from cast shadows , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583).

[21]  Bir Bhanu,et al.  Physical models for moving shadow and object detection in video , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[22]  Reinhard Koch,et al.  Self-calibration and metric reconstruction in spite of varying and unknown internal camera parameters , 1998, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36271).

[23]  Roberto Cipolla,et al.  Camera Self-Calibration from Unknown Planar Structures Enforcing the Multiview Constraints between Collineations , 2002, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[24]  Roger Y. Tsai,et al.  A versatile camera calibration technique for high-accuracy 3D machine vision metrology using off-the-shelf TV cameras and lenses , 1987, IEEE J. Robotics Autom..

[25]  Paulo R. S. Mendonça,et al.  Camera Calibration from Surfaces of Revolution , 2003, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[26]  Pierre Gurdjos,et al.  Methods and geometry for plane-based self-calibration , 2003, 2003 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2003. Proceedings..

[27]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes in C , 2002 .

[28]  Long Quan,et al.  Single Axis Geometry by Fitting Conics , 2002, ECCV.

[29]  Zhengyou Zhang,et al.  Camera calibration with one-dimensional objects , 2002, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[30]  Mohan M. Trivedi,et al.  Detecting Moving Shadows: Algorithms and Evaluation , 2003, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[31]  Mubarak Shah,et al.  Tracking and Object Classification for Automated Surveillance , 2002, ECCV.

[32]  Alexandru Tupan,et al.  Triangulation , 1997, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[33]  Jörn Ostermann,et al.  Detection of Moving Cast Shadows for Object Segmentation , 1999, IEEE Trans. Multim..

[34]  Xiaochun Cao,et al.  Camera calibration and light source estimation from images with shadows , 2005, 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05).

[35]  B. Caprile,et al.  Using vanishing points for camera calibration , 1990, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[36]  Qian Chen,et al.  Camera Calibration with Two Arbitrary Coplanar Circles , 2004, ECCV.

[37]  Horst Bischof,et al.  Camera calibration from a single night sky image , 2004, CVPR 2004.

[38]  Hua Li,et al.  A new easy camera calibration technique based on circular points , 2003, Pattern Recognit..

[39]  Ramakant Nevatia,et al.  Self-calibration of a camera from video of a walking human , 2002, Object recognition supported by user interaction for service robots.

[40]  Stephen J. Maybank,et al.  On plane-based camera calibration: A general algorithm, singularities, applications , 1999, Proceedings. 1999 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Cat. No PR00149).

[41]  Alberto Del Bimbo,et al.  Metric 3D reconstruction and texture acquisition of surfaces of revolution from a single uncalibrated view , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[42]  Mubarak Shah,et al.  Two-frame wide baseline matching , 2003, Proceedings Ninth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[43]  Katsushi Ikeuchi,et al.  Illumination from Shadows , 2003, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[44]  Sudipta N. Sinha,et al.  Camera network calibration from dynamic silhouettes , 2004, CVPR 2004.

[45]  Long Quan,et al.  Geometry of Single Axis Motions Using Conic Fitting , 2003, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[46]  Andrew Zisserman,et al.  Combining scene and auto-calibration constraints , 1999, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[47]  Andrew Zisserman,et al.  Multiple view geometry in computer visiond , 2001 .

[48]  Larry S. Davis,et al.  Camera calibration using spheres: a semi-definite programming approach , 2003, Proceedings Ninth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[49]  Takahiro Okabe,et al.  Spherical harmonics vs. Haar wavelets: basis for recovering illumination from cast shadows , 2004, CVPR 2004.

[50]  Zhanyi Hu,et al.  Camera Calibration from the Quasi-affine Invariance of Two Parallel Circles , 2004, ECCV.

[51]  Andrew W. Fitzgibbon,et al.  Bundle Adjustment - A Modern Synthesis , 1999, Workshop on Vision Algorithms.

[52]  Zhengyou Zhang,et al.  A Flexible New Technique for Camera Calibration , 2000, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[53]  Pierre Gurdjos,et al.  Another Way of Looking at Plane-Based Calibration: The Centre Circle Constraint , 2002, ECCV.

[54]  Olivier D. Faugeras,et al.  The geometry of multiple images - the laws that govern the formation of multiple images of a scene and some of their applications , 2001 .

[55]  Bill Triggs,et al.  Autocalibration from Planar Scenes , 1998, ECCV.

[56]  Takahiro Okabe,et al.  Spherical harmonics vs. Haar wavelets: basis for recovering illumination from cast shadows , 2004, Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2004. CVPR 2004..