Robust RGB-D-IMU Calibration Method Applied to GPS-Aided Pose Estimation
Abstract
The challenging problem of multi-modal sensor fusion for 3D pose estimation in robotics, known as odometry, relies on the precise calibration of all sensor modalities within the system. Optimal values for time-invariant intrinsic and extrinsic parameters are estimated using various methodologies, from deterministic filters to non-deterministic optimization models. We propose a novel optimization-based method for intrinsic and extrinsic calibration of an RGB-D-IMU visual-inertial setup with a GPS-aided optimizer bootstrapping algorithm. Our front-end pipeline provides reliable initial estimates for the RGB camera intrinsics and trajectory based on an optical flow Visual Odometry (VO) method. Besides calibrating all time-invariant properties, our back-end optimizes the spatio-temporal parameters such as the target’s pose, 3D point cloud, and IMU biases. Experimental results on real-world and realistically high-quality simulated sequences validate the proposed first complete RGB-D-IMU setup calibration algorithm. Ablation studies on ground and aerial vehicles are conducted to estimate each sensor’s contribution in the multi-modal (RGB-D-IMU-GPS) setup on the vehicle’s pose estimation accuracy. GitHub repository: https://github.com/AbanobSoliman/HCALIB.