The following is a preprint of:

An automated calibration method for non-see-through head mounted displays (2011) Gilson, S.J., Fitzgibbon, A.W. and Glennerster, A. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 199, 328-335

Abstract
Accurate calibration of a head mounted display (HMD) is essential both for research on the visual system and for realistic interaction with virtual objects. Yet, existing calibration methods are time consuming and depend on human judgements, making them error prone. These methods are also limited to optical see-through HMDs. Building on our existing approach to HMD calibration Gilson et al. (2008), we show here how it is possible to calibrate a non-see-through HMD. A camera is placed inside an HMD displaying an image of a regular grid, which is captured by the camera. The HMD is then removed and the camera, which remains fixed in position, is used to capture images of a tracked calibration object in multiple positions. The centroids of the markers on the calibration object are recovered and their locations re-expressed in relation to the HMD grid. This allows established camera calibration techniques to be used to recover estimates of the HMD display’s intrinsic parameters (width, height, focal length) and extrinsic parameters (optic centre and orientation of the principal ray). We calibrated a HMD in this manner and report the magnitude of the errors between real image features and reprojected features. Our calibration method produces low reprojection errors and involves no error-prone human judgements.

Science direct copy of article (subscription required). I can email a pdf (a.glennerster "at" reading.ac.uk).
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