Automatic extrinsic calibration for lidar-stereo vehicle sensor setups

Sensor setups consisting of a combination of 3D range scanner lasers and stereo vision systems are becoming a popular choice for on-board perception systems in vehicles; however, the combined use of both sources of information implies a tedious calibration process. We present a method for extrinsic calibration of lidar-stereo camera pairs without user intervention. Our calibration approach is aimed to cope with the constraints commonly found in automotive setups, such as low-resolution and specific sensor poses. To demonstrate the performance of our method, we also introduce a novel approach for the quantitative assessment of the calibration results, based on a simulation environment. Tests using real devices have been conducted as well, proving the usability of the system and the improvement over the existing approaches. Code is available at http://wiki.ros.org/velo2cam_calibration.