Perception

Camera Intrinsics

Camera intrinsics are the internal parameters of a camera's projection model: focal lengths, principal point, skew, and lens distortion coefficients, usually organized into a 3x3 intrinsic matrix K plus a distortion vector. They map 3D points in the camera frame to 2D pixel coordinates under the pinhole model. Intrinsics are fixed by the lens and sensor but change with zoom, focus, and temperature, and are estimated during camera calibration.

Why it matters for physical AI

Depth back-projection, visual servoing, and any pixel-to-metric reasoning depend on correct intrinsics, and models trained on data from one camera can transfer poorly to cameras with different intrinsics unless images are rectified or normalized.