Extrinsic calibration of a push-broom lidar and camera using 3-D multi-planar association

Abstract

In this paper we propose a method of extrinsically calibrating two of the most commonly used sensors in autonomous robotic systems: a 2-D lidar sensor and camera. Using a tri-planar calibration target, our method extracts rich point and planar feature information from the measurements of both sensors. We approach the problem of estimating the extrinsic paramaters using optimisation, and by minimising the direct 3-D point-plane correspondences between these features, are able to accurately estimate the parameters. Our method is shown to be visually accurate and robust.