Fast Extrinsic Calibration of a Laser Rangefinder to a Camera

External calibration of a camera to a laser rangefinder is a common pre-requisite on today’s multi-sensor mobile robot platforms. However, the process of doing so is relatively poorly documented and almost always time-consuming. This document outlines an easy and portable technique for external calibration of a camera to a laser rangefinder. It describes the usage of the Laser-Camera Calibration Toolbox (LCCT), a Matlab R -based graphical user interface that is meant to accompany this document and facilitates the calibration procedure. We also summarize the math behind its development.