Calibrating a Multi-arm Multi-sensor Robot: A Bundle Adjustment Approach

Complex robots with multiple arms and sensors need good calibration to perform precise tasks in unstructured environments. The sensors must be calibrated both to the manipulators and to each other, since fused sensor data is often needed. We propose an extendable framework that combines measurements from the robot’s various sensors (proprioceptive and external) to calibrate the robot’s joint offsets and external sensor locations. Our approach is unique in that it accounts for sensor measurement uncertainties, thereby allowing sensors with very different error characteristics to be used side by side in the calibration. The framework is general enough to handle complex robots with kinematic components, including external sensors on kinematic chains. We validate the framework by implementing it on the Willow Garage PR2 robot, providing a significant improvement in the robot’s calibration.

[1]  K. S. Arun,et al.  Least-Squares Fitting of Two 3-D Point Sets , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[2]  Ricardo Baeza-Yates,et al.  Computer Science 2 , 1994 .

[3]  Fadi Dornaika,et al.  Hand-Eye Calibration , 1995, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[4]  Tatsuo Arai,et al.  An implicit loop method for kinematic calibration and its application to closed-chain mechanisms , 1995, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[5]  John M. Hollerbach,et al.  The Calibration Index and Taxonomy for Robot Kinematic Calibration Methods , 1996, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[6]  Kostas Daniilidis,et al.  Hand-Eye Calibration Using Dual Quaternions , 1999, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  Andrew W. Fitzgibbon,et al.  Bundle Adjustment - A Modern Synthesis , 1999, Workshop on Vision Algorithms.

[8]  Eric Jones,et al.  SciPy: Open Source Scientific Tools for Python , 2001 .

[9]  Guilin Yang,et al.  Local POE model for robot kinematic calibration , 2001 .

[10]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Vision Algorithms: Theory and Practice , 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[11]  Carlo Tomasi.  Camera Calibration , 2002 .

[12]  Robert Pless,et al.  Extrinsic Auto-calibration of a Camera and Laser Range Finder , 2003 .

[13]  Robert Pless,et al.  Extrinsic calibration of a camera and laser range finder (improves camera calibration) , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[14]  Tomás Svoboda,et al.  A Convenient Multicamera Self-Calibration for Virtual Environments , 2005, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[15]  Fast Extrinsic Calibration of a Laser Rangefinder to a Camera , 2005 .

[16]  Chanjira Sinthanayothin,et al.  Point-cloud-to-point-cloud technique on tool calibration for dental implant surgical path tracking , 2008, SPIE Medical Imaging.

[17]  John Kenneth Salisbury,et al.  Towards a personal robotics development platform: Rationale and design of an intrinsically safe personal robot , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[18]  Quoc V. Le,et al.  Joint calibration of multiple sensors , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[19]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  Learning Kinematic Models for Articulated Objects , 2009, IJCAI.

[20]  Kurt Konolige,et al.  Autonomous door opening and plugging in with a personal robot , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[21]  Andrew Calway,et al.  Efficient visual odometry using a structure-driven temporal map , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.