Efficient Real-Time Radial Distortion Correction for UAVs
This addresses the need for efficient, calibration-free image correction in UAV applications, enabling quick optics changes, though it is incremental as it builds on existing homography and IMU-based methods.
The paper tackles the problem of real-time radial distortion correction for UAV cameras without needing pre-calibration, by using IMU data to align cameras with gravity and proposing a minimal solver that estimates focal length, distortion, and motion parameters, achieving performance comparable to or better than state-of-the-art methods that rely on calibration.
In this paper we present a novel algorithm for onboard radial distortion correction for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with an inertial measurement unit (IMU), that runs in real-time. This approach makes calibration procedures redundant, thus allowing for exchange of optics extemporaneously. By utilizing the IMU data, the cameras can be aligned with the gravity direction. This allows us to work with fewer degrees of freedom, and opens up for further intrinsic calibration. We propose a fast and robust minimal solver for simultaneously estimating the focal length, radial distortion profile and motion parameters from homographies. The proposed solver is tested on both synthetic and real data, and perform better or on par with state-of-the-art methods relying on pre-calibration procedures.