How to use POSE in ARCore? - augmented-reality

The ARCore documentation defines Pose as :
Pose represents an immutable rigid transformation from one coordinate space to another. As provided from all ARCore APIs, Poses always describe the transformation from the object's local coordinate space to the world coordinate space. The transformation is defined using a quaternion rotation about the origin followed by a translation.
What is object's local coordinate space and world coordinate space?

You can think of the objects local co-ordinate space as the x, y and z axis for just the object itself and the world co-ordinate space as the x, y, and z axis of the entire world that you are viewing in your preview.
In other words the local space is as if the object just exists by itself. You can rotate, tilt, zoom etc the object in this space in the usual way.
When you want to show your object in the real world every point on the object in the local space, which will have an x, y, z, co-ordinate in that local space, needs to map to an x,y,z in the world space.

Related

Find the Transformation Matrix that maps 3D local coordinates to global coordinates

I'm coding a calibration algorithm for my depth-camera. This camera outputs an one channel 2D image with the distance of every object in the image.
From that image, and using the camera and distortion matrices, I was able to create a 3D point cloud, from the camera perspective. Now I wish to convert those 3D coordinates to a global/world coordinates. But, since I can't use any patterns like the chessboard to calibrate the camera, I need another alternative.
So I was thinking: If I provide some ground points (in the camera perspective), I would define a plane that I know should have the Z coordinate close to zero, in the global perspective. So, how should I proceed to find the transformation matrix that horizontalizes the plane.
Local coordinates ground plane, with an object on top
I tried using the OpenCV's solvePnP, but it didn't gave me the correct transformation. Also I thought in using the OpenCV's estimateAffine3D, but I don't know where should the global coordinates be mapped to, since the provided ground points do not need to lay on any specific pattern/shape.
Thanks in advance
What you need is what's commonly called extrinsic calibration: a rigid transformation relating the 3D camera reference frame to the 'world' reference frame. Usually, this is done by finding known 3D points in the world reference frame and their corresponding 2D projections in the image. This is what SolvePNP does.
To find the best rotation/translation between two sets of 3D points, in the sense of minimizing the root mean square error, the solution is:
Theory: https://igl.ethz.ch/projects/ARAP/svd_rot.pdf
Easier explanation: http://nghiaho.com/?page_id=671
Python code (from the easier explanation site): http://nghiaho.com/uploads/code/rigid_transform_3D.py_
So, if you want to transform 3D points from the camera reference frame, do the following:
As you proposed, define some 3D points with known position in the world reference frame, for example (but not necessarily) with Z=0. Put the coordinates in a Nx3 matrix P.
Get the corresponding 3D points in the camera reference frame. Put them in a Nx3 matrix Q.
From the file defined in point 3 above, call rigid_transform_3D(P, Q). This will return a 3x3 matrix R and a 3x1 vector t.
Then, for any 3D point in the world reference frame p, as a 3x1 vector, you can obtain the corresponding camera point, q with:
q = R.dot(p)+t
EDIT: answer when 3D position of points in world are unspecified
Indeed, for this procedure to work, you need to know (or better, to specify) the 3D coordinates of the points in your world reference frame. As stated in your comment, you only know the points are in a plane but don't have their coordinates in that plane.
Here is a possible solution:
Take the selected 3D points in camera reference frame, let's call them q'i.
Fit a plane to these points, for example as described in https://www.ilikebigbits.com/2015_03_04_plane_from_points.html. The result of this will be a normal vector n. To fully specify the plane, you need also to choose a point, for example the centroid (average) of q'i.
As the points surely don't perfectly lie in the plane, project them onto the plane, for example as described in: How to project a point onto a plane in 3D?. Let's call these projected points qi.
At this point you have a set of 3D points, qi, that lie on a perfect plane, which should correspond closely to the ground plane (z=0 in world coordinate frame). The coordinates are in the camera reference frame, though.
Now we need to specify an origin and the direction of the x and y axes in this ground plane. You don't seem to have any criteria for this, so an option is to arbitrarily set the origin just "below" the camera center, and align the X axis with the camera optical axis. For this:
Project the point (0,0,0) into the plane, as you did in step 4. Call this o. Project the point (0,0,1) into the plane and call it a. Compute the vector a-o, normalize it and call it i.
o is the origin of the world reference frame, and i is the X axis of the world reference frame, in camera coordinates. Call j=nxi ( cross product). j is the Y-axis and we are almost finished.
Now, obtain the X-Y coordinates of the points qi in the world reference frame, by projecting them on i and j. That is, do the dot product between each qi and i to get the X values and the dot product between each qi and j to get the Y values. The Z values are all 0. Call these X, Y, 0 coordinates pi.
Use these values of pi and qi to estimate R and t, as in the first part of the answer!
Maybe there is a simpler solution. Also, I haven't tested this, but I think it should work. Hope this helps.

Overhead camera's pose estimation with OpenCV SolvePnP results in a few centimeter off height

I'd like to get the pose (translation: x, y, z and rotation: Rx, Ry, Rz in World coordinate system) of the overhead camera. I got many object points and image points by moving the ChArUco calibration board with a robotic arm (like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q99dUPYCPs). Because of that, I already have exact positions of all the object points.
In order to feed many points to solvePnP, I set the first detected pattern (ChArUco board) as the first object and used it as the object coordinate system's origin. Then, I added the detected object points (from the second pattern to the last) to the first detected object points' coordinate system (the origin of the object frame is the origin of the first object).
After I got the transformation between the camera and the object's coordinate frame, I calculated the camera's pose based on that transformation.
The result looked pretty good at first, but when I measured the camera's absolute pose by using a ruler or a tape measure, I noticed that the extrinsic calibration result was around 15-20 millimeter off for z direction (the height of the camera), though almost correct for the others (x, y, Rx, Ry, Rz). The result was same even I changed the range of the object points by moving a robotic arm differently, it always ended up to have a few centimeters off for the height.
Has anyone experienced the similar problem before? I'd like to know anything I can try. What is the common mistake when the depth direction (z) is inaccurate?
I don't know how you measure the z but I believe that what you're measuring with the ruler is not z but the euclidean distance which is computed like so:
d=std::sqrt(x*x+y*y+z*z);
Let's take an example, if x=2; y=2; z=2;
then d will be d~3,5 so 3.5-2=1.5 is the difference you get between z and the ruler when you said around 15-20 millimeter off for z direction.

normalized point coordinates in undistortPoints function

In undistortPoints function from OpenCV, the documentations says that
http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/imgproc/doc/geometric_transformations.html#undistortpoints
where undistort() is an approximate iterative algorithm that estimates the normalized original point coordinates out of the normalized distorted point coordinates (“normalized” means that the coordinates do not depend on the camera matrix).
It seems that the normalized point coordinates is obtained by adding 1 to the third coordinate. What does normalized point coordinates means? How can it be used for?
In the above, there are two lines
x" = (u - cx)/fx
y" = (v - cy)/fy
Is there one term for the coordinates(x'', y'')?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "Is there one term for the coordinates (x", y")", but if you mean what do they physically represent, then they are the coordinates of the image point (u, v) on the image plane expressed in the camera coordinate system (origin at the centre of projection, x-axis to the right, y-axis down, z-axis pointing out towards the scene and perpendicular to the image plane), whereas (u,v) are the coordinates of the image point relative to the origin at the top left corner of the image plane (x-axis to the right, y-axis down). All quantities are expressed in pixels.
The output of the undistortPoints function are normalised coordinates, which means that the points returned in the dst parameter have their (x", y") coordinates between 0 and 1 (not shown in the equations you presented, but is the output of the internally called undistort function within undistortPoints).
2D coordinates (whether normalised or not) that have a 1 inserted as the third coordinate are known as homogenous coordinates. The same can be done for 3D coordinates by inserting a 1 into the 4th element. Homogenous coordinates are useful because they allow certain operations to be represented as a simple linear equation whereas their non-homogenous equivalent may not be as straightforward.

opencv giving camera pose - rvec and tvec - with mismatched coordinate system

I need to find the pose (rotation matrix + translation vector) for a camera, and for that I am using cv2.solvePnP(), but the results I get from photos don't match.
In order to debug, I created (with numpy) a "debugging 3d scene" composed of some object points (four corners of a square), some camera points (focal point, principal point and four corners of the virtual projection plane) and parameters (focal distance, initial orientation).
Then, I construct a general rotation matrix by multiplying three axis rotation matrices, apply this general rotation to the camera (numpy.dot()), project the object points in the virtual projection plane (line-plane intersection algorithm), and calculate the in-plane 2D coordinates (point-line distance) to the projection plane axes.
After doing this (objectpoints to imagepoints via rotationmatrix), I feed the imagepoints and the objectpoints to cv2.Rodrigues(cv2.solvePnP(...)) and get a matrix "not quite identical" to the one I used, only because of transposition and some elements with opposite signal (negative vs. positive), respecting this relation:
solvepnp_rotmatrix = my_original_matrix.transpose * [ 1 1 1]
[ 1 1 -1]
[-1 -1 1]
Although the rotation matrix mismatch is "solveable" with this hack, the TRANSLATION VECTOR gives coordinates that don't make sense to me.
I suspect there are mismatches between my 3D model (handedness, axes orientation, order of rotations) and the model used by opencv:
I use OpenGL-like coordinate system (X increases to the right, Y increases upwards, and Z increases toward the observer;
I applied the rotations in the order that made more sense to me (all right-handed, first around global Z, then around global X, then around global Y);
The image plane is between object and camera focal point (virtual projection plane, instead of real/CCD);
The origin of my image plane (virtual CCD) is lower-left corner (Xpix increases to the right, Ypx increases upwards.
My questions are:
Given that the terms of the rotation matrix are identical, only transposed and with different signal in some terms, is it possible that I am confusing some of openCV conventions (handedness, order of rotations, axis direction)? And how can I discover which one(s)?
Also, is there a way to relate my handmade translation vector to the tvec returned by solvePnP? (of course, ideally, the best would be to make the coordinate systems to match, in the first place).
Any help will be most welcome!

how can i measure distance of an detected object from camera in video using opencv?

All i know is that the height and width of an object in video. can someone guide me to calculate distance of an detected object from camera in video using c or c++? is there any algorithm or formula to do that?
thanks in advance
Martin Ch was correct in saying that you need to calibrate your camera, but as vasile pointed out, it is not a linear change. Calibrating your camera means finding this matrix
camera_matrix = [fx,0 ,cx,
0,fy,cy,
0,0, 1];
This matrix operates on a 3 dimensional coordinate (x,y,z) and converts it into a 2 dimensional homogeneous coordinate. To convert to your regular euclidean (x,y) coordinate just divide the first and second component by the third. So now what are those variables doing?
cx/cy: They exist to let you change coordinate systems if you like. For instance you might want the origin in camera space to be in the top left of the image and the origin in world space to be in the center. In that case
cx = -width/2;
cy = -height/2;
If you are not changing coordinate systems just leave these as 0.
fx/fy: These specify your focal length in units of x pixels and y pixels, these are very often close to the same value so you may be able to just give them the same value f. These parameters essentially define how strong perspective effects are. The mapping from a world coordinate to a screen coordinate (as you can work out for yourself from the above matrix) assuming no cx and cy is
xsc = fx*xworld/zworld;
ysc = fy*yworld/zworld;
As you can see the important quantity that makes things bigger closer up and smaller farther away is the ratio f/z. It is not linear, but by using homogenous coordinates we can still use linear transforms.
In short. With a calibrated camera, and a known object size in world coordinates you can calculate its distance from the camera. If you are missing either one of those it is impossible. Without knowing the object size in world coordinates the best you can do is map its screen position to a ray in world coordinates by determining the ration xworld/zworld (knowing fx).
i don´t think it is easy if have to use camera only,
consider about to use 3rd device/sensor like kinect/stereo camera,
then you will get the depth(z) from the data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNI

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