Catadioptric Projective Geometry

  • Authors:

  • Christopher Geyer;Kostas Daniilidis

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory, 3401 Walnut Street, 336C, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228, USA. cgeyer@cis.upenn.edu;University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory, 3401 Walnut Street, 336C, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228, USA. kostas@cis.upenn.edu

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Computer Vision
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Catadioptric sensors are devices which utilize mirrors and lenses to form a projection onto the image plane of a camera. Central catadioptric sensors are the class of these devices having a single effective viewpoint. In this paper, we propose a unifying model for the projective geometry induced by these devices and we study its properties as well as its practical implications. We show that a central catadioptric projection is equivalent to a two-step mapping via the sphere. The second step is equivalent to a stereographic projection in the case of parabolic mirrors. Conventional lens-based perspective cameras are also central catadioptric devices with a virtual planar mirror and are, thus, covered by the unifying model. We prove that for each catadioptric projection there exists a dual catadioptric projection based on the duality between points and line images (conics). It turns out that planar and parabolic mirrors build a dual catadioptric projection pair. As a practical example we describe a procedure to estimate focal length and image center from a single view of lines in arbitrary position for a parabolic catadioptric system.