On-site calibration method for outdoor binocular stereo vision sensors

•It is suitable for the calibration of BSVS in outdoor environments.•The accuracy of it is equivalent to that of the method using a planar target.•It only requires a double cylindrical target and a line laser projector.

Using existing calibration methods for binocular stereo vision sensors (BSVS), it is very difficult to extract target characteristic points in outdoor environments under complex light conditions. To solve the problem, an online calibration method for BSVS based a double parallel cylindrical target and a line laser projector is proposed in this paper. The intrinsic parameters of two cameras are calibrated offline. Laser strips on the double parallel cylindrical target are mediated to calibrate the configuration parameters of BSVS. The proposed method only requires images of laser strips on the target and is suitable for the calibration of BSVS in outdoor environments. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through physical experiments.