Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system

At the end of the first quarter of 2012, more than 600 Velodyne LiDAR systems had been sold worldwide for various robotic and high-accuracy survey applications. The ultra-compact Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR has become a predominant sensor for many applications that require lower sensor size/weight and co...

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Main Authors: Chan, T., Lichti, D., Belton, David
Other Authors: M. Scaioni
Format: Conference Paper
Published: ISPRS 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41045
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author Chan, T.
Lichti, D.
Belton, David
author2 M. Scaioni
author_facet M. Scaioni
Chan, T.
Lichti, D.
Belton, David
author_sort Chan, T.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description At the end of the first quarter of 2012, more than 600 Velodyne LiDAR systems had been sold worldwide for various robotic and high-accuracy survey applications. The ultra-compact Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR has become a predominant sensor for many applications that require lower sensor size/weight and cost. For high accuracy applications, cost-effective calibration methods with minimal manual intervention are always desired by users. However, the calibrations are complicated by the Velodyne LiDAR's narrow vertical field of view and the very highly time-variant nature of its measurements. In the paper, the temporal stability of the HDL-32E is first analysed as the motivation for developing a new, automated calibration method. This is followed by a detailed description of the calibration method that is driven by a novel segmentation method for extracting vertical cylindrical features from the Velodyne point clouds.The proposed segmentation method utilizes the Velodyne point cloud's slice-like nature and first decomposes the point clouds into 2D layers. Then the layers are treated as 2D images and are processed with the Generalized Hough Transform which extracts the points distributed in circular patterns from the point cloud layers. Subsequently, the vertical cylindrical features can be readily extracted from the whole point clouds based on the previously extracted points. The points are passed to the calibration that estimates the cylinder parameters and the LiDAR's additional parameters simultaneously by constraining the segmented points to fit to the cylindrical geometric model in such a way the weighted sum of the adjustment residuals are minimized. The proposed calibration is highly automatic and this allows end users to obtain the time-variant additional parameters instantly and frequently whenever there are vertical cylindrical features presenting in scenes. The methods were verified with two different real datasets, and the results suggest that up to 78.43% accuracy improvement for the HDL-32E can be achieved using the proposed calibration method.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-410452023-02-13T08:01:35Z Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system Chan, T. Lichti, D. Belton, David M. Scaioni R. C. Lindenbergh S. Oude Elberink D. Schneider F. Pirotti Cylindrical Feature LiDAR Segmentation Accuracy Calibration At the end of the first quarter of 2012, more than 600 Velodyne LiDAR systems had been sold worldwide for various robotic and high-accuracy survey applications. The ultra-compact Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR has become a predominant sensor for many applications that require lower sensor size/weight and cost. For high accuracy applications, cost-effective calibration methods with minimal manual intervention are always desired by users. However, the calibrations are complicated by the Velodyne LiDAR's narrow vertical field of view and the very highly time-variant nature of its measurements. In the paper, the temporal stability of the HDL-32E is first analysed as the motivation for developing a new, automated calibration method. This is followed by a detailed description of the calibration method that is driven by a novel segmentation method for extracting vertical cylindrical features from the Velodyne point clouds.The proposed segmentation method utilizes the Velodyne point cloud's slice-like nature and first decomposes the point clouds into 2D layers. Then the layers are treated as 2D images and are processed with the Generalized Hough Transform which extracts the points distributed in circular patterns from the point cloud layers. Subsequently, the vertical cylindrical features can be readily extracted from the whole point clouds based on the previously extracted points. The points are passed to the calibration that estimates the cylinder parameters and the LiDAR's additional parameters simultaneously by constraining the segmented points to fit to the cylindrical geometric model in such a way the weighted sum of the adjustment residuals are minimized. The proposed calibration is highly automatic and this allows end users to obtain the time-variant additional parameters instantly and frequently whenever there are vertical cylindrical features presenting in scenes. The methods were verified with two different real datasets, and the results suggest that up to 78.43% accuracy improvement for the HDL-32E can be achieved using the proposed calibration method. 2013 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41045 10.5194/isprsannals-II-5-W2-61-2013 ISPRS unknown
spellingShingle Cylindrical Feature
LiDAR
Segmentation
Accuracy
Calibration
Chan, T.
Lichti, D.
Belton, David
Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title_full Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title_fullStr Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title_full_unstemmed Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title_short Temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne HDL-32E lidar system
title_sort temporal analysis and automatic calibration of the velodyne hdl-32e lidar system
topic Cylindrical Feature
LiDAR
Segmentation
Accuracy
Calibration
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/41045