Calibration and Metrology Using Still and Video Images

Abstract

Metrology, the measurement of real world metrics, has been investigated extensively in computer vision for many applications. The prevalence of video cameras and sequences has led to the demand for fully automated systems. Most of the existing video metrology methods are simple extensions of still-image algorithms, which have certain limitations, requiring constraints such as parallelism of lines. New techniques are needed in order to achieve accurate results for broader applications. An important preprocessing step and a closely related topic to metrology is calibration using planar patterns. Existing approaches lack exibility and robustness when extended to video sequences. This dissertation advances the state of the art in calibration and video metrology in three directions: (1) the concept of partial rectification is proposed along with new calibration techniques using a circle with diverse types of constraints; (2) new calibration methods for video sequences using planar patterns undergoing planar motion are proposed; and (3) new algorithms to extend video metrology to a wide range of applications are presented. A fully automated system using the new technique has been built for measuring the wheelbases of vehicles.