Methods and apparatus for dynamic optical flow sensor calibration by IMU in planar robot systems

1. A method of calibrating an optical flow (OF) sensor by using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) in a robot system, the method comprising:

performing measurements to collect data from an IMU; and

modifying one or more of optical flow scales, an alignment angle, and/or displacement between the IMU and the OF sensor using the data to calibrate the OF sensor,

wherein the step of calibrating optical flow scales, an alignment angle, and/or displacement between the IMU and the OF sensor further comprises:

using fminsearch and/or a Least Squares (LS) process in one or more formulations, via at least a formulation of a rigid body equation in a predetermined domain and a predetermined frame.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the IMU measures a linear acceleration and/or an angular velocity.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the IMU obtains an angular position.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined domain is an acceleration domain, a velocity domain, and/or a position domain.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined frame is a body frame or a user frame.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calibrating comprises:

relating IMU and OF sensor measurements through the rigid body equation in a body frame and a velocity domain.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calibrating comprises:

receiving, from the IMU, a first signal including a linear acceleration;

receiving, from the OF sensor, a second signal including a velocity of the robot system;

receiving, from the IMU, a third signal including a vector generated based on an angular velocity and a known vector;

after rotating to a user frame, applying a first set of direct-current (DC) block filters to the first signal, the second signal, and the third signal; and

integrating the linear acceleration in the user frame.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

after integrating the linear acceleration in the user frame, applying a second set of DC block filters to the first signal, the second signal, and the third signal; and rotating to a body frame.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the first set and the second set of DC block filters have one or more same DC block filters.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calibrating comprises:

receiving, from the IMU, a first signal including a linear acceleration;

receiving, from the OF sensor, a second signal including a velocity of the robot system;

receiving, from the IMU, a third signal including an angular velocity;

applying a first set of direct-current (DC) block filters to at least the first signal and the second signal in a body frame;

integrating the linear acceleration in the body frame;

rotating the integrated linear acceleration and the velocity to a user frame; and

applying a second set of DC block filters to at least the first signal and the second signal after the integration and the rotation.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:

applying the first set and/or the second set of DC block filters to the third signal in the body frame.

12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the first set and the second set of DC block filters have one or more same DC block filters.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:

after rotating the integrated linear acceleration and the velocity to the user frame and applying the second set of DC block filters to at least the first signal and the second signal after the integration and the rotation, rotating at least the integrated linear acceleration and the velocity back to the body frame.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the calibrating comprises obtaining calibration parameters to calibrate the OF sensor.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the calibration parameters include one or more kinematic parameters being estimated from at least the formulation of the rigid body equation.

16. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining whether a quality of matching of the data output from the IMU and the data output from the OF sensor is above a threshold; and

calibrating the OF sensor using the data output from the IMU only when the quality of matching is above the threshold.

17. A robot system comprising an optical flow (OF) sensor and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) implementing the method of claim 1 .

18. An apparatus comprising a processor, a transceiver, and one or more sensors implementing the method of claim 1 .