I have a high precision stereo camera and a robot which are independent units (the camera is not mounted to the robot). I wish to compute a transformation from the camera frame to the robot base frame. The robot kinematics are characterised, so such a calibration would enable me to manipulate world objects using the camera for perception.
I'm assuming the AX=XB approach is familiar to someone reading this question. But with Kabsch I was thinking:
- Set the robot end effector to at least 3 positions (not co-linear) with a calibration pattern on the end effector.
- Don't even bother getting the pose of the calibration pattern. Just read the center co-ordinate directly off the point cloud from my camera. (so the calibration pattern is merely acting as an easily detectable keypoint)
- Apply Kabsch (with no scaling) to get the transformation matrix.
I also realised the Kabsch approach is possible without a stereo camera, as the PnP step with a 2D camera would still give me the center co-ordinate of the calibration pattern (albeit much less precise than my expensive stereo camera). But still, this makes me wonder whether I'm missing something with my Kabsch approach.
