2009 Fifth International Conference on Image and Graphics

Robot Body Guided Camera Calibration:

Calibration using An Arbitrary Circle

Qian Chen, Haiyuan Wu and Toshikazu Wada

Wakayama University, Faculty of Systems Engineering,
930 Sakaedani, 640-8510, Wakayama, Japan
{chen, wuhy, twada}@sys.wakayama-u.ac.jp

Abstract
This paper presents a novel camera calibration method
for a system consists of a sensor-less mobile robot and an
external camera. This method can estimate the focal length
and the viewing direction of the camera relative to a plane
where the sensor-less mobile robot moves from a single im-
age of an arbitrary circle on that plane. Since it is easy to
let afour-wheel mobile car to move along a circular locus,
our method does not requires specially designed calibra-
tion objects for camera calibration. The method does not
use the position of the center and the radius of the circle
and the circle is allowed to be partially occluded. Through
computer simulations and experiments with a real camera
and a robot, we have confirmed that our method is more
robust than the Homography based calibration using four
point correspondences.
ing low speed and constant steering angle, it is easy to let
the RC car to draw a circular trajectory. The circular tra-
jectory is projected as an ellipse onto the image plane by
a fixed external camera (Figure 1). Based on this geomet-
ric property, we developed a new method for camera cali-
bration using one single image of an arbitrary circle. This
method can determine the focal length f, and the tilt angle
() that describes the view direction of the camera relative to
the working plane.
Image
Room

Figure 1. The system construction

1 Introduction
A camera calibration is necessary whenever the camera
setting has been changed. Therefore, much time will be
consumed for the calibration before a robot can be con-
trolled after a new setup. For dissolving this undesired time
consumption, we developed a new technology for the cam-
era calibration that uses a robot body, and that is able to
incorporate into the system as initialization operation.
We are performing research about environmental recog-
nition using mobile robots. We use a system consists of
1) a sensor-less mobile robot; 2) a radio wave controller to
send instructions to the robot; 3) an external camera fixed
in the environment; and 4) a computer. In this system, we
employ a four-wheel radio controlled car (hereafter called
"RC car") moving on a plane as a calibration object. That
is, we use the locus of its movement as a calibration pat-
tern. Without a navigation system, it is difficult to let the
RC car to make a straight line locus. However, by keep-
Several researches of camera calibration, 3D structure
estimation and motion analysis using circular patterns [1]-
[4], or conic patterns [5]-[11] have been reported so far.
They all assume multi-viewpoint images.
Meng et al. [1] proposed a method that uses at least three
images from different viewpoint of a planar pattern contain
a circle and lines passing through its center. Kim et al. [3]
proposed a method using con-centric circles. It requires two
views. Yang et al. [4] proposed a similar method except that
ellipses are used instead of circles. All these are methods to
estimate camera intrinsic parameters.
Long[5] proposed a method to find the correspondence
between conics in two views, and to estimate the relative
orientation of the optical axis of two views.
Kanatani and Wu[8],[9] reported a method to extract 3D
information from conics in images. The intrinsic and ex-
trinsic camera parameters are supposed to be known.
Avidan et al. [6] proposed an approach to estimate the 3D

IEEE
978-0-7695-3883-9/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE 39 ~computer
DOl 10.1l09/ICIG.2009.175 society
positions of a moving point along a conic section viewed by
a monocular moving camera. It requires nine views. If the
point is known to move along a circle, it needs seven views.
Homography can be used as a camera calibration method
using a planar pattern. It requires at least four point corre-
spondences to estimate the matrix that convert points on an
image plane to the corresponding points on another image
plane. By decomposing the Homography matrix, we can
estimate the normal vector of the plane, the translation, and
the rotation between the two cameras. But the decomposi-
tion is alternative[ 12] [13].
Virtual camera
r...
pcamera
1~HOmOgraphY
! !
,=.,
Ground
Figure 2. Conversion between two cameras,
which are observing a same plane
2 Basic Equations
2.1 Assumptions
In this paper, we assume 1) the roll angle is zero, 2) the
camera is a pinhole camera with unknown focal length. And
3) the speed of the robot, the radius and the center of the
circles draw by the robot are all unknown. As shown in
Figure 3, 1) the world coordinates system (O-XYZ), and
2) camera coordinates system (OI_XIY I ZI) are used in our
research. The origins of both coordinates systems are set
at the optical center of the fixed external camera. We let
the normal vector of the working plane be the Z-axis of 0-
XY Z, and the optical-axis be the Z'-axis of OI_Xly l ZI.
The Y-axis of 0- XY Z is set to be perpendicular to Z-axis
and ZI -axis. Because we assume that the roll angle of the
camera is zero, thus XI-axis ofO'-X'Y' ZI is parallel to the
working plane.
Image plape
.\

By assuming that the roll angle of the camera is zero, we The.center of circle
developed a unique method that can estimate the direction (xc, yc, zc)
of the axis ofthe camera and its focal length simultaneously
from a single image of an arbitrary circle on the plane. We
consider that the assumption of a zero roll angle is not a too Figure 3. The world coordinates and camera
strict limitation. In the case of monitoring mobile robots coordinates systems
that move on a planar floor, there is seldom a need of none-
zero roll angles, and to adjust a camera to have a zero roll
angle is easy. The scene configuration is characterized by the follow-
Although some of the extrinsic camera parameters (such ing parameters: 1) the distance between the working plane
as pan angle and the complete translation ofthe camera) can and the optical center h; 2) the radius of the circle r; 3) the
not determined by using our method, the estimated informa- center of the circle (x e, Ye, ze) and 4) the focal length f.
tion is enough to convert the images taken by the external The relation between the world coordinate system and
camera into a vertical view of the work plane, from which the camera coordinate system can be described by the fol-
the correct movement of the robot can be observed (figure lowing equation,
2). To be concrete, we first let the robot to move along a
circle on the work plane, which is observed by the external
o
cosB (1)
camera. Next, the focal length and the view direction of the
sin B
camera relative to the work plane are determined from the
circular trajectory projected on to the image plane. the circle is described by,
In this method, the center of the circle and the radius of
the circle are not used for the calibration, and the circle is (x - x c)2 + (z - zc)2 = r2
{ Y (2)
allowed to be partially occluded. Furthermore, we do not = Yc =-h
use the speed of the robot, because it is difficult to mea-
and the perspective projection of the camera is given by,
sure. Through computer simulations and the experiments
with a real camera and a RC car, we have confirmed that
our method is more robust than the Homography based cal-
=-f~ (3)
- _flL
ibration using four point correspondences. - Zl

40
2.2 Formulation 3 Experimental Results using Simulation Im-
ages
In general case, a circle on the working plane is projected
on to an image plane as an ellipse. The ellipse detected from
In this simulation, we use the world coordinate system
the image [16] [17] is described by the following equation,
and the camera coordinates system as shown in figure 3. We
f; + Blxly + CI; + Dlx + Ely + F = O. (4) assume that the size of an image sensor is 0.3 x 0.4 [inch],
and the image resolution is 640 x 480 [pixel]. Therefore, the
From Eqs.(1), (2), (3) and (4), the equations that describe size of one pixel is 0.15875 [mm]. The distance between
the relation between parameters of the ellipse (B, C, D, E, the optical center of the camera and the working plane is 3
F), the parameters of the camera (f, B) and the circle (x c, [meter].
Yc, zc, r) are obtained as following,
B = 2x~ cos B (5 - 1) 3.1 Dependency between estimation error and po-
C = (sinB - z~cosB)2 + (x~2 - r /2 ) cos 2 B (5 - 2) sition of the circle
D = -2fx~sinB (5 - 3)
E = 2J[z~(sin2 B - cos 2 B) + (1- z~2 _ 2 + r /2 ) Assuming the focal length f is 550 [pixel], and the tilt
sinBcosB] (5 - 4) angle B is 55 [degree], the radius of circles is 0.25, 0.50, or
2
F = f2[(z~ sin B + cos B)2 + (x~ - r /2 ) sin 2 B] (5 - 5) 0.75 [meter] scattered on the working plane. We have tested
(5) our method using each image of ellipse synthesized with the
where l
= xc/h, z~ = zc/h, r = r/h. parameter settings.
In order to determine f and B, x ~, and r l need to be < We first used 8 images ofa circle having 0.75 [meter] ra-
dius, and the center ofthe circle is different from each other.
eliminated from Eq.(5). By computing ~~i~::::il in Eq.(5)
The RMS error and the maximum error of the estimated fo-
the following is derived,
cal length and the tilt angle are shown in table 1 denoted by
D hand BI , respectively.
ftanB = - B' (6)

From the Eqs.(5-4) and (5-2) in Eq.(5), the following equa-

tions can be derived, Table 1. Estimation errors of circles with dif-
ferent radius
sin 2B(x~ 2 + z~ 2 - r /2 )2 + cos 2Bz~ = sin 2B -If I
I===:;=~c== maximum error RMS error
2
(1 + cos 2B)(x~ + z~2 - r /2 ) - 2 sin 2Bz~ = . h(%) 3.1 I 0.7
{ -B~(d:;-':--'------,)- -------:0=-2=-1:---- 0.066
2C-1+cos2B 1 egree .
I
(7) 12(%) 4.0 I 0.7
Solving the Eq.(7), the following is obtained,
I B2(degree) 0.38 0.055
24.7 I 2.0
z~2 _ r /2 = (1- C) tan 2 B - ~ tanB + 13(%)
2+ C. (8)
I B3 (degree) 2.29 0.30

By computing Eq.(5-2)x f2+ Eq.(5-5), we have,

2/ 2 2 f2(C-1)+F The image that gives the maximum estimation error for
+ Zc
1
- r = j2 . (9) both the focal length and tilt angle is shown in figure 4(a),
where the size of the ellipse was 211 x 162 pixels. The sim-
2
Substituting Eq.(9) for 2 + z~ - r /2 in Eq.(8), the follow- ilar experiments using circles of 0.50 [meter] radius and of
ing equation is inferred, 0.25 [meter] radius were also performed. 28 and 72 images
are synthesized, from which the RMS error and the maxi-
f2(C -1) +F E
j2 =(1-C)tan 2 B- mum error are shown in table 1 denoted by 12, B2 , and 13,
y tanB+C. (10)
B3 , respectively. The images that give the maximum estima-
From Eq.(6) and Eq.(10), f and B can be determined as fol- tion error are shown in figure 4(b) and (c), where the size of
lowing, the ellipse were 127 x 84 and 90 x 42 pixels, respectively.
Two factors can be considered as the reasons causing big
ylB2F - BDE + (C - 1)D2 estimation error. One is that the small size of the ellipse
IBI (11) in the image, in this case the quantization error becomes
D relatively big. Another one is that the estimated value of B
= arctan(- fB)
is too small, for example, B of the ellipse shown in figure

41
 o o o angle to test the sensitivity to the roll angle. We use circles
(a) r=0.75 (m) (b) r=0.50 (m) (c) r=0.25 (m)
(x,z)=(-0.4,-2.6) (x,z)=(-0.3,-3.4) (x,z)=(-0.1,-3.6)
Figure 4. Images showing big errors.
4(c) was 0.03. Hence, the calculation error of the formula
(11) becomes big.
3.2 Dependency between estimation error and tilt
angle
~ 3.4
0
r)
(a) 40 (b) 60 (c) 80
Figure 5. Synthetized images using different
tilt angle.
In order to investigate the dependency of the estimation
error and the tilt angle of the camera, we synthesized im-
ages by changing the tilt angle from 20 degree to 60 degree
at a step of 10 degree, while the radius of the circles on
the working plane is 0.5 [meter] and the focal length is 550
[pixel]. The RMS error of focal length f was 1.2%, and of
the tilt angle () was 0.06 degrees. In the case using circles
of r = 0 .25 [meter], the tilt angle () was changed from 40 to
80 [degree] at a step of 10 degree (figure 5), the RMS error
offocallength f was 1.3%, and of the tilt angle () was 0.15
[degrees]. Therefore the estimation error can be considered
independent to the tilt angle.
From these experiment results, we can say that, except-
ing the cases that 1) the center of the ellipse in the image is
too close to the y axis ofthe image coordinates, or 2) the cir-
cle to be viewed is too far from the camera, that cause the
value of B becomes too small, accurate estimation results
can be obtained with our method.
3.3 Dependency between estimation error and roll
angle
Although we assumed that the roll angle is zero, here we
investigate the estimation error in the case of non-zero roll
42
of r = 0.5 [meter], the focal length f = 550 [pixel], the tilt
angle () = 55 [degree], let the roll angle changes from 0 to
3 [degree] at a step of 1 degree to synthesize images for the
experiment. In order to avoid undesired effect of quantiza-
tion error, we select the images from the synthesized ones
that the minor axis of the ellipse in it is longer than 40 pix-
els, to estimate the parameters using the proposal method.
The results show the relation between the estimation error
and the roll angle is summarized in table 2.
Table 2. The estimation error caused by the
roll angle
Roll angle (degree) I 0 I 1 I 2 I 3 I
==:R:=:'M==S:=e=rr~or::::C=o==:f~()~(d~eg~r=eeC=)I 0.055 I 0.274 I 0.446 I 0.613 I
Comparison with the Homography
Using camera setting of the focal length f = 220 [pixel]
and the tilt angle () = 38 [degree], we synthesized a per-
spective projection image consists of a square of 2.0 x 2.0
[meter], and its inscribed circle (Figure 6)(a). We also syn-
thesized an image of a vertical view of the same scene. Us-
ing these images, we compared our method with the Ho-
mography based approach.
Assuming that the correspondence between the four ver-
texes of the square in the two images has been established,
we calculated the Homography matrix, and then decom-
posed it into the rotation matrix, translation, and the normal
vector of the plane.
0
n
(a) (b)
Figure 6. (a) An image for comparison of our
method and Homography method, and (b) the
vertical view image of the same scene.
The estimated results are ()1 = 38.18 [degree] and ()2 =
37.88 [degree]. We determined that the latter result is valid,
because it has smaller errors. However, the focal length
cannot be estimated because of lack of information. On
the other hand, from the same image, the results estimated
with our method were () = 37.99 [degree], and f = 206
[pixel]. From this result, we can claim that our method pro-
vides more precise results than the four point correspon-
dence based calibration.
Furthermore, the figure 6(a) was transformed into a ver-
tical view (figure 6(b)) using estimated f and () with our
method. In the figure 6(b), the length of four sides of a
rectangle was 120,119,119,119 [pixel] respectively. The
adjoining angle of two sides was 90 1.44,90 0.96 [de-
gree] respectively. It shows that camera parameters can be
estimated very accurate with our method.
4 Experiments with real data
4.1 Environment Map Acquisition
Our calibration method has been implemented as an ini-
tialization procedure of a robot control system. Our system
consists of a four-wheel RC car with red and green LEDs
mounted on its top, a fixed external camera (SONY DFW
VL500), and a PC with a radio controller as shown in Fig-
ure 7(a). In the system, the motion trajectory of the RC car
is observed by detecting the LEDs from the images at video
rate by the color target detector [18].
(a) System (b) Test environment
Figure 7. Experiment scenery
When the system is stared, it performs the camera cali-
bration automatically. In this calibration, the RC car tries
to move at low speed and keeping a constant steering angle.
When the observed trajectory is closed, the system consid-
ers the trajectory as a circle and estimates the parameters of
the ellipse observed by the camera, and then performs the
camera calibration. When the calibration is finished, planar
scene of the working plane where the robot moves around
will be able to be transformed into a vertical view, from
43
which the real movement of the RC car movement can be
monitored. Figure 7 (b) shows a test environment.
Figure 8 (a) shows the robot trajectory during the envi-
ronment map generation using the robot body. That is, if
we detected that the robot movement is blocked irrelevant
to the action command, then we know that there must be an
obstacle; if the LEDs disappeared from the image, then we
know that there must be an object that occluded the robot
from the camera view. In this way, we can generate the en-
vironment map. A resulted map is shown in figure 8(b).
Both of them are shown in virtual vertical view, and the real
environment is shown in Figure 7(b).
(a) (b)
Figure 8. (a) Some louses of a robot. (b) An
obtained environmental map
4.2 Accuracy Evaluation based on CircIe-
Likeness
The focal length f and the tilt angle () were estimated by
using 30 sets of real image data (including seven kinds of
tilt angles and 22 kinds of focal lengths). In order to evalu-
ate the accuracy of estimated results, we calculated the con-
version Homography matrix from the fixed external camera
to a virtual camera that gives vertical view of the scene us-
ing the estimated f and (). After that, each real image is
converted to the vertical view. The circle-likeness is then
estimated by calculating the ratio of the minor axis a to the
major axis b of the ellipse in the converted image.
The minimum value of the ratio was alb = 0.995, the
maximum value was alb = 1.00, and the mean of the ra-
tio was alb = 0.998. An example of the locus ofa robot's
movement obtained from the image series, and the images
after the conversion to the vertical view is shown in the fig-
ure 9(a) and (b), respectively. The ratio alb of the ellipse
in the image 9(b) was 0.998. From these results, we con-
firmed that the locus of the robot in the converted virtual
image is close to a circle enough, that shows the accuracy
of the proposal technique.
(a) (b)
Figure 9. (a) The locus of a robot observed
from a real camera. (b) Images synthesized
from the real images based on the estimated
camera parameters.
5 Conclusion
We have developed a new camera calibration method us-
ing circular pattern drawn by a four-wheel robot. Since a
circle pattern fits an observation range can be made imme-
diately, this approach can solve the problem of estimating
the extrinsic camera parameters in far flat environment such
as a sports ground. On the other hand, the robot's move
speed is not used, if there is an arbitrary circle, our pro-
posal technique can be used. Estimating Homography ma-
trix from point correspondence data suffers from the alter-
native decomposition problem. However, our method pro-
duces a unique solution. This means that we can perform
the camera calibration without using additional planes or
cameras. In addition, we can realize an automatic camera
calibration system based on our method.
Acknowledgments
This research was partially supported by the Ministry of
Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Grant-in-Aid for
Scientific Research(C), 21500171.
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