ijnek
commented
5 days ago I don't know the details - had a quick look and I found an older mention of the plumb-bob model in a matlab camera calibration toolbox (2003). Though it does seem like it was popularized by usage in the ROS community.
Since this is a question, i will close it out to reduce the number of open issues. (Feel free to continue the discussion though.)
This is a plumb bob. How did the name for OpenCV distortion become known as plumb bob? Seems strange to me.
The radial and tangential distortion used by OpenCV is a variant of Brown and Conrady's distortion model originally published in here and here. Furthermore, OpenCV's camera calibration documentation does not mention the phrase "plumb bob" as far as I can tell.
I'm curious where this language come from and what it is intended to mean. I believe there is better and more precise language that can be used here and I for one am in favor of being explicit in this regard. For better or worse, ROS's naming here is becoming a de facto standard in the computer vision community and I'd like to understand why and where "plumb bob" comes from.