Hand-Eye calibration using stereo camera through pure rotations -fitting circular arc in 3D space with joint angle constraint-

A camera mounted on a Pan-Tilt unit requires the so called Hand-Eye calibration to calibrate its assembling position and orientation. In the literature, the method that uses a sequence of pure rotations through the pan and tilt motions was presented to solve this problem. However, the calibration accuracy degrades when the circular arc that can be measured by the camera is quite limited. This paper extends the traditional method and introduces a new method that solves this problem by adding an additional joint angle constraint that directly fits the circular arc in 3D space. Simulations results showed improved performance of the proposed methods comparing to the traditional methods. Furthermore, experimental results using a Pan-Tilt-Camera system confirmed that with the proposed methods a better calibration result can be obtained compared with the traditional methods.