How to Transform Centroid from Pixel to Real World Coordinates
No. I suggest you read the basics in Multiple View Geometry of Hartley and Zisserman, freely available in the web. Dependent on the camera model, the intrinsics contain different parameters. For the pinhole camera model, these are the focal length and the principal point.

The only reason why you maybe could directly transform your 2D centroid to 3D is that you use a 3D camera. Read the manual of the camera, it should be explained how the relation between 2D and 3D coordinates is given for your specific model.
If you have only image data, you can only compute a 3D point from at least two views.

No, of course not. Please don't be lazy and start reading the basics about camera projection instead of asking for others to explain the common basics that are written down everywhere in the web and literature.
I am working on an application using an IFM 3D camera to identify parts prior to a robot pickup. Currently I am able to find the centroid of these objects using contours from a depth image and from there calculate the center point of these objects in pixel space.
My next task is to then transform the 2D centroid coordinates to a 3D point in 'real' space. I am able to train the robot such that it's coordinate frame is either at the center of the image or at the traditional (0,0) point of an image (top left).
The 3D camera I am using provides both an intrinsic and extrinsic matrix. I know I need to use some combination of these matrices to project my centroid into three space but the following questions remain:

My current understanding from googling is the intrinsic matrix is used to fix lens distortion (barrel and pinhole warping, etc.) whereas the extrinsic matrix is used to project points into the real world. Is this simplified assumption correct?

How can a camera supply a single extrinsic matrix? I know traditionally these matrices are found using the checkerboard corners method but are these not dependent on the height of the camera?

Is the solution as simple as taking the 3x4 extrinsic matrix and multiplying it by a 3x1 matrix [x, y, 1] and if so, will the returned values be relative to the camera center or the traditional (0,0) point of an image.


Thanks in advance for any insight! Also if it's any consolation I am doing everything in python and openCV.