Accurate Calibration of a Self-Developed Vehicle-Borne LiDAR Scanning System

Abstract

To obtain high-precision measurement data using vehicle-borne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanning (VLS) systems, calibration is necessary before a data acquisition mission. Thus, a novel calibration method based on a homemade target ball is proposed to estimate the system mounting parameters, which refer to the rotational and translational offsets between the LiDAR sensor and inertial measurement unit (IMU) orientation and position. Firstly, the spherical point cloud is fitted into a sphere to extract the coordinates of the centre, and each scan line on the sphere is fitted into a section of the sphere to calculate the distance ratio from the centre to the nearest two sections, and the attitude and trajectory parameters of the centre are calculated by linear interpolation. Then, the real coordinates of the centre of the sphere are calculated by measuring the coordinates of the reflector directly above the target ball with the total station. Finally, three rotation parameters and three translation parameters are calculated by two least-squares adjustments. Comparisons of the point cloud before and after calibration and the calibrated point clouds with the point cloud obtained by the terrestrial laser scanner show that the accuracy significantly improved after calibration. The experiment indicates that the calibration method based on the homemade target ball can effectively improve the accuracy of the point cloud, which can promote VLS development and applications.