Demand for Highly-Calibrated Cameras — More Accurate Than OpenCV

    • New

    Hi community,

    We’re a team working on camera calibration for computer vision and robotics applications.
    Our technology enables metrological-quality calibration, providing accuracy and reliability beyond standard OpenCV methods.

    Some key features:
    - We use a method based on active targets and a machine-learning-inspired workflow, allowing us to achieve consistently lower calibration errors (up to 2–4 times lower forward/reprojection error than OpenCV, even for mass-produced or wide-angle cameras).
    - The process is flexible and suitable for various camera types (standard, wide-angle, fish-eye, and even exotic optics).
    - We generate a Forward Projection Error (FPE) chart (heatmap) for each camera.
    - Calibration can be tailored to your specific end task (e.g., robot localization, measurement, 3D reconstruction).

    Questions:

    1. Would you be interested in purchasing pre-calibrated cameras with calibration accuracy proven to be better than OpenCV’s results?

    2. For which applications would this level of accuracy and certification be most valuable?

    3. What, in your opinion, would be a reasonable price premium for a camera with such calibration and quality analytics included?

    Any feedback or comments on needs, pain points, or desired features are welcome.

    Thanks in advance!

  • MOM July 4, 2025 at 8:09 PM

    Approved the thread.
    • New

    What does "pre-calibrated" mean in this case?

    In industrial robotics, typically all 2D cameras need field calibration because they're never used at exactly the working distance/angle as any factory calibration might have been performed. Plus, over time, everything shifts, gets bent, etc. And that's just for the intrinsic (pixel/mm) calibration. The extrinsic (camera-to-robot, or "hand-eye") calibration is a whole additional layer that is almost unique on every deployment.

    So a factory pixel/mm calibration on a 2D camera would generally be almost useless, no matter how accurate it was.

    Now, most 3D cameras come pre-calibrated (intrinsically) simply b/c they include the structured light source and/or parallax cameras in a single mounting. While field-calibrated versions do exist, that calibration tends to be finicky enough that factory-calibrated units are generally worth the expense.

    Inline metrology systems mounted to robots and used as part of a production line usually need some sort of very regular re-calibration or calibration checking of the intrinsic calibration due to factors like vibration, thermal expansion, etc. This often requires placing some sort of calibration target inside the working area that the robot can carry the metrology head to every X cycles and ensure the calibration is still valid (or generate a drift correction).

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