Generalized Pose Estimation from Line Correspondences with Known Vertical Direction

We propose a novel method to compute the absolute pose of a generalized camera based on straight lines, which are common in urban environment. The only assumption about the imaging model is that 3D straight lines are projected via projection planes determined by the line and camera projection directions, i.e. correspondences are given as a 3D world line and its projection plane. Since modern cameras are frequently equipped with various location and orientation sensors, we assume that the vertical direction (e.g. a gravity vector) is available. Therefore we formulate the problem in terms of 4 unknowns using 3D line - projection plane correspondences which yields a closed form solution. The solution can be used as a minimal solver as well as a least squares solver without reformulation. The proposed algorithm have been evaluated on various synthetic datasets as well as on real data. Experimental results confirm state of the art performance both in terms of quality and computing time.