Error Analysis and Calibration of Camera/LRF Sensor Head for Telerobotic Systems

This paper described an error analysis of a camera/laser range finder sensor head to characterize the effects of an error of the sensor head components, and a calibration of the sensor head. The sensor head of the telerobotic system, which is being developed for D&D operation of nuclear facilities, improves the work efficiency of a human operator through visual guidance and 3D modeling of the task space. For successful and accurate task executions, three subsystems must be calibrated:1) calibration of the sensor head, 2) calibration of the homogeneous transformation matrix from the sensor head frame to the manipulator frame, and 3) calibration of the manipulator. This paper determined dominant error sources of the sensor head through the analysis of error propagation, and calibrated the sensor head by compensating the dominant error sources