An efficient approach for the calibration of multiple PTZ cameras

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an efficient approach to infer the relative positioning and orientation among multiple pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. In this approach, the tilt angle and altitude of each PTZ camera are estimated first based on the observation of some simple objects lying on a horizontal plane. With the estimated tilt angles and altitudes, the calibration of multiple cameras can be easily accomplished by comparing the back-projected world coordinates of some common vectors in 3-D space. This calibration method does not require particular system setup or specific calibration patterns. The sensitivity analysis with respect to parameter fluctuations and measurement errors is also discussed. Experiment results over real images have demonstrated the efficiency and feasibility of this approach.