Omnidirectional Vision System with Laser Illumination in a Flexible Configuration and Its Calibration by One Single Snapshot

An omnidirectional vision system consisting of a fisheye camera and structured light projector has its own distinctive advantages toward other vision systems. A vision system provides a wide range of information by one single capture. Moreover, the laser feature is easy to detect and extract from the given image for further analysis. In order to obtain the reliable results, the vision system must be calibrated. There have been improvements toward calibration techniques for vision systems with laser illumination. However, these techniques are not suitable for an omnidirectional vision system in a particular configuration. Motivated by the abovementioned problem, this article presents a novel omnidirectional vision system with laser illumination in a flexible configuration and a method for its extrinsic calibration. Flexible configuration means that both camera and laser plane are no longer parallel to the floor. The calibrated vision system is evaluated experimentally by using simulated and real data to demonstrate that the proposed calibration method is more robust and provides a higher measurement accuracy.