An automatic calibration algorithm for endoscopic structured light sensors in cylindrical environment

Structured light sensing systems, as one of the most common optical-based nondestructive evaluation techniques, have been widely applied for inline pipeline inspection. The sensor can be inserted inside the pipe to generate 3D visualisation and evaluate the cracks in the materials. The precise calibration of the camera-projector measurement system is of great significance to ensure the measurement accuracy of the 3D sensing system. Conventional calibration methods for structured light sensors involve complicated and time-consuming procedures and are easily affected by ambient light. The paper presents a novel algorithm to automatically calibrate the projection module and estimate the stereo parameters between the camera and the projector. The calibration algorithm exploits the cylindrical nature of the inspected pipe to create a set of geometric constraints and automatically calibrate the sensor without the need for reference calibration points. Experimental and simulation results showed that the algorithm could successfully estimate the projector’s intrinsic and extrinsic parameters by simply acquiring the data inside a cylindrical pipe with a known diameter. The proposed algorithm highly reduces the data collection time for the calibration (only 53 s), improves the accuracy, and simplifies the calibration process.