Self-calibration of a stereo-camera by pure translational motion

This paper describes a method for calibrating a stereo-camera using its pure translational motion. The left and right cameras translate in several directions simultaneously. For each camera and each translation, an image sequence is obtained, feature points being extracted and tracked. An epipole is estimated for each image sequence and calibration is carried out using the relation between known translations and estimated epipoles. After finding calibration and rotation matrices of each camera, 3D reconstruction of feature points is performed. Reconstructed points are used to find translational relation between both cameras. The method was tested with real image data, and experimental results show that it is applicable in practice.