A study on improving the calibration of body scanner built on multiple RGB-Depth cameras

Purpose The calibration is a key but cumbersome process for 3D body scanning using multiple depth cameras. The purpose of this paper is to simplify the calibration process by introducing a new method to calibrate the extrinsic parameters of multiple depth cameras simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach An improved method is introduced to enhance the accuracy based on the virtual checkerboards. Laplace coordinates are employed for a point-to-point adjustment to increase the accuracy of scanned data. A system with eight depth cameras is developed for full-body scanning, and the performance of this system is verified by actual results. Findings The agreement of measurements between scanned human bodies and the real subjects demonstrates the accuracy of the proposed method. The entire calibration process is automatic. Originality/value A complete algorithm for a full human body scanning system is introduced in this paper. This is the first publically study on the refinement and the point-by-point adjustment based on the virtual checkerboards toward the scanning accuracy enhancement.