Plane-based external camera calibration with accuracy measured by relative deflection angle

In this paper, we present an efficient external calibration technique for a typical multi-camera system. The technique is very handy in practice using a simple planar pattern. Based on homography, three different pair-wise estimation algorithms are proposed to recover the rigid rotation and translation between neighboring cameras. By registering the accurate and reliable partial calibrated structures, the complete calibration of a multi-camera system can be accomplished. In order to evaluate and compare the calibration results for different camera setups, a novel accuracy metric is introduced based on the deflection angles of projection rays. Experimental results using both simulated and real data are presented to verify the validity and performance of the proposed method.