An Evaluation of the Performance of RANSAC Algorithms for Stereo Camera Calibrarion

Abstract This paper compares the use of RANSAC for the determination of epi-polar geometry for calibrated stereo reconstruction of 3D data with more conventional optimisation schemes. The paper illustrates the poor convergence eciency,of RANSAC which is explained by a theoretical relationship describing its dependency upon the number of model parameters. The need for an a-priori estimate of outlier contamination proportion is also highlighted. A new algorithm is suggested which attempts to make better use of the solutions found during the RANSAC search while giving a convergence criteria which is independent of outlier proportion. Although no signican t benet can be found for the use of RANSAC on the problem of stereo camera calibration estimation. The new algorithm suggests a simple way of improving the eciency,of RANSAC searches which we believe would be of value in a wide range of machine vision problems.