Calibration of a hand/eye matrix and a connection matrix using relative pose measurements

The problem investigated in this paper is an extension of the robotic hand/eye calibration problem. The system consists of a robot, a gimbal and a three dimensional sensor. The task is to determine the hand/eye matrix that relates the sensor coordinate frame to the first coordinate frame in the gimbal and the connection matrix that relates the first coordinate frame in the gimbal to the tool frame in the robot. The paper focuses on a special case of the mentioned problem. In this study, the robot is a x-y-z type and the gimbal has two rotary joints. Two solution methods, one of which is linear and another is nonlinear, are presented in this paper. Issues such as the uniqueness of the linear solution and the observability of error parameters are also investigated. Simulation and experimental results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the method.