Research Paper:
An Efficient Method of Solving the PnP Problem for Fisheye Cameras
Chenxiao Wang*1,*2
, Biao Wang*3,
, Yulong Ding*1,*2,*4
, Dunhui Xiao*1,*2,*5
, and Ben M. Chen*6

*1Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Tongji University
No.398 Lianchuang Road, Shanghai 201210, China
*2National Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems
No.398 Lianchuang Road, Shanghai 201210, China
*3College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
No.29 Jiangjun Avenue, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211106, China
Corresponding author
*4Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
No.129 Longwen Road, Shanghai 200232, China
*5School of Mathematical Sciences, Tongji University
No.1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China
*6Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, China
Fisheye cameras, with their wide field of view, are highly beneficial for applications such as unmanned systems. Solving the perspective-n-point (PnP) problem that estimates the pose of a camera is particularly important for fisheye cameras. However, most existing PnP methods are primarily developed for pinhole cameras, with limited research focusing on fisheye cameras. This study presents an efficient method for solving the PnP problem for fisheye cameras. The proposed method introduces a mapping from a fisheye camera image to a virtual image plane based on the geometric properties of the fisheye camera. Two-dimensional reference points on the virtual plane are then employed to solve the PnP problem. Error analysis validates the effectiveness of the mapping through numerical computation. The experimental results further demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better accuracy and efficiency than the existing methods.
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