Calibration and Kinematic Analysis of the Velodyne HDL-64E S2 Lidar Sensor

A proposed methodology for the simultaneous kinematic calibration and boresight adjustment of the Velodyne HDL-64E S2 scanning lidar system is presented and analyzed. The mathematical model for both the measurements of the HDL-64E S2 scanner and their georeferencing by a GNSS/INS system is presented and discussed. A planar feature based least squares adjustment approach is utilized in order to derive an optimal solution for the laser's internal calibration parameters and boresight offsets. The results of the adjustment on an actual kinematic dataset along with a detailed examination of the adjustment residuals are given. An approximately 30 percent improvement in the 3D planar misclosure residual RMSE was achieved by the proposed calibration, as compared to an estimation of the laser boresight parameters only. Results also suggest that there may still be some un-modeled distortions in the range measurements from the scanner. However, despite this, the overall precision of the adjusted laser scanner data appears to make it a viable choice for high accuracy mobile scanning applications.