Flexible hand-eye calibration for multi-camera systems

Calibration of coordinate systems between cameras and robots, i.e. hand-eye-calibration, is of key importance in sensor based robotics. We present a method which is based on using a very simple, conic calibration object, and results in fast and simple calculations. It originates from the pose estimation algorithms and contributes to earlier methods robustness for the location of the calibration object and simplicity from the point of view of image processing. Our method is also based on the Bayesian model, thus it also provides estimates for the spatial uncertainties, in the form of covariances of the pose parameters. The algorithm has been tested by simulations and practical experiments.