A Novel Method for Intrinsic and Extrinsic Parameters Estimation by Solving Perspective-Three-Point Problem with Known Camera Position

Abstract

The aim of the perspective-three-point (P3P) problem is to estimate extrinsic parameters of a camera from three 2D–3D point correspondences, including the orientation and position information. All the P3P solvers have a multi-solution phenomenon that is up to four solutions and needs a fully calibrated camera. In contrast, in this paper we propose a novel method for intrinsic and extrinsic parameter estimation based on three 2D–3D point correspondences with known camera position. Our core contribution is to build a new, virtual camera system whose frame and image plane are defined by the original 3D points, to build a new, intermediate world frame by the original image plane and the original 2D image points, and convert our problem to a P3P problem. Then, the intrinsic and extrinsic parameter estimation is to solve frame transformation and the P3P problem. Lastly, we solve the multi-solution problem by image resolution. Experimental results show its accuracy, numerical stability and uniqueness of the solution for intrinsic and extrinsic parameter estimation in synthetic data and real images.