US Patent 11199614 Lidar and image calibration for autonomous vehicles

A coordinate system of a camera of an autonomous vehicle is calibrated to a coordinate system of a LIDAR module using the hand eye equation. However, traditional solutions to the hand eye equation are based on robust rotation about three axes. While calibrating a camera of a car, there is usually robust rotation about only one axis. Degeneracy in rotation about two axes makes the traditional hand eye equation challenging to solve. A rotation vector is defined that has a scaling value. By using the rotation vector, the hand eye equation can be solved to calibrate a pose of the camera to a pose of the LIDAR module.