Efficient Circular Object Pose Determination

This paper presents the efficient algorithms for the pose determination of a circular object with and without a priori knowledge of the object radius. The developed algorithms valid for a circular object are the result of the elaboration of Ma's work [2], which determines the pose of a conic object from two perspective views. First, the geometric constraint of a circular object and its projection on the image plane of a camera is described. The number of perspective views required for the object pose determination with and without a priori knowledge of the object radius is also discussed. Second, with a priori knowledge of the object radius, the pose of a circular object is determined from a single perspective view. The object pose information, expressed by two surface normal vectors and one position vector, is given in a closed form and with no ambiguity. Third, without a priori knowledge of the object radius, the pose of a circular object is determined from two perspective views. While the surface normal vectors are obtained from the first view, the position vector is obtained from the two views.