Method and apparatus for in-field stereo calibration

1. A stereo camera calibration method, comprising:

controlling a stereo camera assembly to capture a sequence of stereo image pairs;

simultaneously with each capture in the sequence, activating a rangefinder;

responsive to each capture in the sequence, updating calibration data for point cloud generation by:

detecting matched features in the stereo image pair, and updating a first portion of the calibration data based on the matched features;

updating an alignment of the rangefinder relative to the stereo camera assembly, based on (i) the updated first portion of the calibration data, and (ii) a detected position of a beam of the rangefinder in a first image of the stereo image pair; and

updating a second portion of the calibration data based on (i) the detected position of the beam of the rangefinder in the first image of the stereo image pair, (ii) the updated rangefinder alignment, and (iii) a depth measurement captured by the rangefinder,

wherein updating the alignment of the rangefinder includes:

obtaining a three-dimensional position of the detected rangefinder beam, based on the detected position of the rangefinder beam in the first image,

retrieving respective three-dimensional positions for preceding rangefinder beams detected in a preceding subset of the sequence of stereo image pairs,

fitting a line to the three-dimensional position and the preceding three-dimensional positions, and

determining a three-dimensional position of the rangefinder based on the fitted line.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

controlling the stereo camera assembly to capture a further stereo image pair;

generating a point cloud from the further stereo image pair, based on at least the updated second portion of calibration data; and

dimensioning an object based on the point cloud.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first portion of the calibration data includes extrinsic parameters of the stereo camera assembly.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein updating the first portion of the calibration data includes:

determining candidate extrinsic parameters from the matched features;

transforming, using the candidate extrinsic parameters, the stereo image pair and a preceding subset of stereo image pairs in the sequence;

detecting further matched features in each of the transformed stereo image pair and the transformed preceding subset of stereo image pairs;

determining a combined error metric for the detected further matched features; and

when the combined error metric is smaller than a previous combined error metric, setting the candidate extrinsic parameters as current extrinsic parameters.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the combined error metric includes a sum of distances in a first dimension between respective pairs of the further matched features.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

prior to updating the alignment of the rangefinder, determining that a region surrounding the detected position of the rangefinder beam in the first image is planar.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second portion of the calibration data includes a scaling factor defining a ratio between (i) an actual depth corresponding to the detected position of the rangefinder beam, and (ii) an observed depth corresponding to the detected position of the rangefinder beam.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein updating the second portion of the calibration data includes:

obtaining the observed depth corresponding to the detected position of the rangefinder beam, based on the first portion of the calibration data;

obtaining the actual depth of the detected position of the rangefinder beam based on (i) a depth measurement from the rangefinder and (ii) the rangefinder alignment; and

determining the scaling factor.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:

generating a combined scaling factor from the scaling factor and a set of previously determined scaling factors.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

prior to updating the second portion of the calibration data, determining that a region surrounding the detected position of the rangefinder beam in the first image is planar.