A Novel Camera-to-Robot Calibration Method for Vision-Based Floor Measurements

A novel hand–eye calibration method for ground-observing mobile robots is proposed. While cameras on mobile robots are common, they are rarely used for ground-observing measurement tasks. Laser trackers are increasingly used in robotics for precise localization. A referencing plate is designed to combine the two measurement modalities of laser tracker 3D metrology and camera-based 2D imaging. It incorporates reflector nests for pose acquisition using a laser tracker and a camera calibration target that is observed by the robot-mounted camera. The procedure comprises estimating the plate pose, the plate—camera pose, and the robot pose, followed by computing the robot—camera transformation. Experiments indicate sub-millimeter repeatability.