FAST-Calib: LiDAR-Camera Extrinsic Calibration in One Second

TL;DR

FAST-Calib is a rapid, accurate, and user-friendly LiDAR-camera extrinsic calibration method that achieves sub-7mm accuracy in under a second using a custom 3D target and robust edge extraction techniques.

Contribution

The paper introduces FAST-Calib, a novel calibration tool that supports various LiDAR types, employs an efficient edge extraction algorithm, and achieves calibration in less than a second.

Findings

Calibration errors below 6.5mm across tested models

Processing time under 0.7 seconds

Validated on three different LiDAR models

Abstract

This paper proposes FAST-Calib, a fast and user-friendly LiDAR-camera extrinsic calibration tool based on a custom-made 3D target. FAST-Calib supports both mechanical and solid-state LiDARs by leveraging an efficient and reliable edge extraction algorithm that is agnostic to LiDAR scan patterns. It also compensates for edge dilation artifacts caused by LiDAR spot spread through ellipse fitting, and supports joint optimization across multiple scenes. We validate FAST-Calib on three LiDAR models (Ouster, Avia, and Mid360), each paired with a wide-angle camera. Experimental results demonstrate superior accuracy and robustness compared to existing methods. With point-to-point registration errors consistently below 6.5mm and total processing time under 0.7s, FAST-Calib provides an efficient, accurate, and target-based automatic calibration pipeline. We have open-sourced our code and dataset on GitHub to benefit the robotics community.