Constructing feature points for calibrating a structured light vision sensor by viewing a plane from unknown orientations

To calibrate a structured light vision sensor, it is necessary to obtain at least four non-collinear feature points that fall on the light stripe plane. We propose a novel method to construct non-collinear feature points used for calibrating a structured light vision sensor with a planar calibration object. After the planar calibration object is moved freely in the range of measuring of the structured light vision sensor at least twice, all the local world coordinates of the feature points falling on the light stripe plane can be readily obtained in site. The global world coordinates of the non-collinear feature points in the local world coordinate frame can be computed through the three-dimensional (3D) camera coordinate frame. A planar calibration object is designed according to the proposed approach to provide accurate feature points. The experiments conducted on a real structured light vision sensor that consists of a camera and a single-light-stripe-plane laser projector reveal that the proposed approach has high accuracy and is practical in the vision inspection applications. The proposed approach greatly reduces the cost of the calibration equipment and simplifies the calibrating procedure. It advances structured light vision inspection one step from laboratory environments to real world use.