The Conception of Test Fields for Fast Geometric Calibration of the FLIR VUE PRO Thermal Camera for Low-Cost UAV Applications

The dynamic evolution of photogrammetry led to the development of numerous methods of geometric calibration of cameras, which are mostly based on building flat targets (fields) with features that can be distinguished in the images. Geometric calibration of thermal cameras for UAVs is an active research field that attracts numerous researchers. As a result of their low price and general availability, non-metric cameras are being increasingly used for measurement purposes. Apart from resolution, non-metric sensors do not have any other known parameters. The commonly applied process is self-calibration, which enables the determining of the approximate elements of the camera’s interior orientation. The purpose of this work was to analyze the possibilities of geometric calibration of thermal UAV cameras using proposed test field patterns and materials. The experiment was conducted on a FLIR VUE PRO thermal camera dedicated to UAV platforms. The authors propose the selection of various image processing methods (histogram equalization, thresholding, brightness correction) in order to improve the quality of the thermograms. The consecutive processing methods resulted in over 80% effectiveness on average by 94%, 81%, and 80 %, respectively. This effectiveness, for no processing and processing with the use of the filtering method, was: 42% and 38%, respectively. Only high-pass filtering did not improve the obtained results. The final results of the proposed method and structure of test fields were verified on chosen geometric calibration algorithms. The results of fast and low-cost calibration are satisfactory, especially in terms of the automation of this process. For geometric correction, the standard deviations for the results of specific methods of thermogram sharpness enhancement are two to three times better than results without any correction.