Accuracy improvement in structured light system calibration using plane based residual error compensation

In the area of structured light system calibration, efforts have been made in improving the performance of an open loop system, which involves data acquisition, model establishment and model parameter identification. In this paper, we introduce a closed loop design concept for structured light system calibration. In addition to the commonly used circular control point based geometric calibration procedure, a planarity error compensation algorithm is proposed as a system feedback to further reduce the systematic error. Our method compensates the largest proportion of the calibration error, in most cases being the model error of the lens distortion in the projector, by rectifying the reconstruction of a planar surface. Experimental results show that the compensation improves the calibration accuracy. The planarity error after compensation is comparable to a well-reputed industrial mechanical measuring machine.