Minimal Solutions to Relative Pose Estimation From Two Views Sharing a Common Direction With Unknown Focal Length

Abstract

We propose minimal solutions to relative pose estimation problem from two views sharing a common direction with unknown focal length. This is relevant for cameras equipped with an IMU (inertial measurement unit), e.g., smart phones, tablets. Similar to the 6-point algorithm for two cameras with unknown but equal focal lengths and 7-point algorithm for two cameras with different and unknown focal lengths, we derive new 4- and 5-point algorithms for these two cases, respectively. The proposed algorithms can cope with coplanar points, which is a degenerate configuration for these 6- and 7-point counterparts. We present a detailed analysis and comparisons with the state of the art. Experimental results on both synthetic data and real images from a smart phone demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed algorithms.