Camera Orientation Estimation in Leaking Indoor Environment via Vanishing Point of Water Drops

In this paper, we propose a novel camera orientation estimation method based on the computation of the vanishing point of water drops in leaking indoor environment. Camera orientation estimation is an important component of robots as it allows them to perform complex tasks such as three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of different environments. Camera estimation usually involves sensors, such as cameras or encoders and sophisticated processing algorithms. In recent years, computer vision techniques have been widely used to estimate the camera orientation in robotics-related research as visual sensing can improve the autonomy of the systems. Although most of these methods perform well in outdoor environments, they are problematic in the environments of indoor disasters, where common visual features may be missing due to collapse and erosion. To solve these problems, we developed a novel technique that employs particular characteristics of leaking indoor environment. Our method uses the vanishing point generated form the trajectories of water drops, to estimate the rotation of the camera. The proposed technique can potentially be applied for inspecting nuclear power plants. Computer-simulated and real data experiments have been performed to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed method. The results of these experiments demonstrate that our method can detect the vanishing point of water drops and estimate the rotation angle accurately.