An Extrinsic Calibration Method for Multiple Infrastructure RGB-D Camera Networks With Small FOV

Abstract

Multiple infrastructure RGB-D cameras can be used for localizing autonomous vehicles in Automated Valet Parking. The accurate calibration of these cameras’ extrinsic parameters is crucial. However, due to the sparse and distributed placement of the cameras, the field of view (FOV) between them is very small. This makes the calibration process complex and dependent on human expertise. To address this, this paper proposes an automatic extrinsic calibration method for multiple infrastructure cameras with a small FOV. The method introduces an auxiliary camera to enhance the association between the multiple infrastructure cameras. A moving checkerboard placed within the public FOV is utilized as a reference for calibration. The optimization method involves constructing a pose graph to store the poses of the cameras and checkerboard, and it solves the pose graph by calculating the reprojection errors of the checkerboard. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a calibration accuracy of two centimeters. It outperforms other calibration methods when applied to a constructed multiple RGB-D camera system. Furthermore, the proposed method is simple and efficient in the real calibration procedure.