Title: A Novel Method for Extrinsic Calibration of Multiple RGB-D Cameras Using Descriptor-Based Patterns,
Abstract: This letter presents a novel method to estimate the relative poses between
RGB-D cameras with minimal overlapping fields of view in a panoramic RGB-D
camera system. This calibration problem is relevant to applications such as
indoor 3D mapping and robot navigation that can benefit from a 360$^\circ$
field of view using RGB-D cameras. The proposed approach relies on
descriptor-based patterns to provide well-matched 2D keypoints in the case of a
minimal overlapping field of view between cameras. Integrating the matched 2D
keypoints with corresponding depth values, a set of 3D matched keypoints are
constructed to calibrate multiple RGB-D cameras. Experiments validated the
accuracy and efficiency of the proposed calibration approach, both superior to
those of existing methods (800 ms vs. 5 seconds; rotation error of 0.56 degrees
vs. 1.6 degrees; and translation error of 1.80 cm vs. 2.5 cm.