Towards Calibration Of Outdoor Multi-Camera Visual Monitoring System

This paper proposes a method for calibrating of multi-camera systems where no natural reference points exist in the surrounding environment. Monitoring the air space at wind farms is our test case. The goal is to monitor the trajectories of flying birds to prevent them from colliding with rotor blades. Our camera calibration method is based on the observation of a portable artificial reference marker made out of a pulsed light source and a navigation satellite sensor module. The reference marker can determine and communicate its position in the world coordinate system at centimeter precision using navigartion sensors. Our results showed that simultaneous detection of the same marker in several cameras having overlapping field of views allowed us to determine the markers position in 3D world coordinate space with an accuracy of 3-4 cm. These experiments were made in the volume around a wind turbine at distances from cameras to marker within a range of 70 to 90 m.