Patent ID: 8698875
Filing Date: 2014-04-15
Classification: G06T,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for estimating orientation of a camera mounted on a vehicle, comprising: determining, by at least one processor, an initial pose estimate of a vehicle having a camera mounted thereon, the initial pose estimate based on global positioning system data, inertial measurement unit data, and wheel odometry data of the vehicle, wherein a pose of the vehicle is defined as a position and orientation of the vehicle relative to the world; obtaining images from one or more runs of image data captured by the camera, the images each having an orientation; processing image data from the images to obtain one or more tracks, wherein each track includes a sequence of matched feature points stemming from a single three-dimensional location; and determining from the initial pose estimate and tracks, a correction parameter to correct the orientations of the images captured by the camera, wherein the processing image data comprises: wherein the determining the correction parameter includes using a nonlinear function defined by: wherein P=P P X=X X R represents the rotation of the camera; ρ denotes a robustifier function (e.g., a Cauchy robustifier); T represents projection; I λ represents a weight used to trade off strength of a first and a second term in F; and P