Panoramic 3D Reconstruction with Three Catadioptric Cameras

In this paper, we present a new system setup combining three catadioptric cameras. Our application is in autonomous vehicles. This camera setup allows for panoramic stereo vision of the environment and therefore proves to be useful for ego motion estimation and localization by 3D feature points all around the vehicle. The three catadioptric cameras are arranged in a triangle on top of the vehicle and are horizontally aligned. In the paper we discuss two methods for 3D scene point reconstruction with the system. We perform experiments for the 3D reconstruction in a simulated environment and evaluate the accuracy by means of a Monte-Carlo-Simulation. The proposed system improves the mean accuracy of the 3D reconstruction significantly compared to a system with two cameras.

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