Uncertainty analysis of LIDAR and panoramic camera calibration

Terrestrial platforms for 3D reconstruction typically combine several data acquisition systems such as lasers, cameras and inertial systems. However the geometrical combination of different sensors requires their calibration and data fusion. These topics are an important task for vision-based systems since it estimates the values of sensor model parameters, such as cameras. The uncertainty of these parameters must be known in order to evaluate the error of the final calibration and their applications. The aim of this paper is to present a method to compute the calibration of both sensors. A new calibration pattern, visible to both sensors is used. Correspondence is obtained between each laser point and its position in the image, the texture and color of each point of LIDAR can be know. Experimental results are presented for data collected with the platform integrated with a 3D laser scanner and a panoramic camera system.