Automatic calibration of multiple cameras and lidars for autonomous vehicles

Abstract

Autonomous navigation of unmanned vehicles (UVs) is currently one of the most interesting scientific and technical problems, and this is even more true for UVs moving across rough terrain. As a rule, such vehicles are equipped with different sensors operating simultaneously, and sophisticated software is being developed to collect and analyze miscellaneous data. For the joint use of data from multiple cameras and lidars, all of them need to be mutually referenced in a single coordinate system. This problem is solved in a process of system calibration. The general idea is to place an object of special type in the field of view of the sensors, so that its characteristic points can be automatically detected from different points of view by all sensors. Then the repeated survey of the object allows you to create the required number of tie points for mutual alignment of the sensors. This work presents a technique for automatic calibration of a system of cameras and lidars using an original calibration object. The presented results of the experiments show that the calibration accuracy is sufficiently high.