Extrinsic calibration of a set of range cameras in 5 seconds without pattern

The integration of several range cameras in a mobile platform is useful for applications in mobile robotics and autonomous vehicles that require a large field of view. This situation is increasingly interesting with the advent of low cost range cameras like those developed by Primesense. Calibrating such combination of sensors for any geometric configuration is a problem that has been recently solved through visual odometry (VO) and SLAM. However, this kind of solution is laborious to apply, requiring robust SLAM or VO in controlled environments. In this paper we propose a new uncomplicated technique for extrinsic calibration of range cameras that relies on finding and matching planes. The method that we present serves to calibrate two or more range cameras in an arbitrary configuration, requiring only to observe one plane from different viewpoints. The conditions to solve the problem are studied, and several practical examples are presented covering different geometric configurations, including an omnidirectional RGB-D sensor composed of 8 range cameras. The quality of this calibration is evaluated with several experiments that demonstrate an improvement of accuracy over design parameters, while providing a versatile solution that is extremely fast and easy to apply.