Do We Really Need an Accurate Calibration Pattern to Achieve a Reliable Camera Calibration?

This article raises the problem of errors caused by the metrology of a calibration pattern to the accurate estimation of the intrinsic and extrinsic calibration parameters modeling the video system. In order to take into account these errors a new approach is proposed that enables us to compute in the same time the traditional calibration parameters and the 3D geometry of the calibration pattern using a multi-images calibration algorithm. Experimental results shows that the proposed algorithm leads to reliable calibration results and proves that calibration errors no longer depend on the accuracy of calibration point measurement, but on the accuracy of calibration point detection in the image plane.