Camera Calibration With Three Noncollinear Points Under Special Motions

Plane-based (2-D) camera calibration is becoming a hot research topic in recent years because of its flexibility. However, at least four image points are needed in every view to denote the coplanar feature in the 2-D camera calibration. Can we do the camera calibration by using the calibration object that only has three points? Some 1-D camera calibration techniques use the setup of three collinear points with known distances, but it is a kind of special conditions of calibration object setup. How about the general setup—three noncollinear points? We propose a new camera calibration algorithm based on the calibration objects with three noncollinear points. Experiments with simulated data and real images are carried out to verify the theoretical correctness and numerical robustness of our results. Because the objects with three noncollinear points have special properties in camera calibration, they are midway between 1-D and 2-D calibration objects. Our method is actually a new kind of camera calibration algorithm.