Automatic alignment of a camera with a line scan LIDAR system

Abstract

We propose a new method for extrinsic calibration of a line-scan LIDAR with a perspective projection camera. Our method is a closed-form, minimal solution to the problem. The solution is a symbolic template found via variable elimination and the multi-polynomial Macaulay resultant. It does not require initialization, and can be used in an automatic calibration setting when paired with RANSAC and least-squares refinement. We show the efficacy of our approach through a set of simulations and a real calibration.