Towards System Calibration of Panoramic Laser Scanners from a Single Station

Terrestrial laser scanner measurements suffer from systematic errors due to internal misalignments. The magnitude of the resulting errors in the point cloud in many cases exceeds the magnitude of random errors. Hence, the task of calibrating a laser scanner is important for applications with high accuracy demands. This paper primarily addresses the case of panoramic terrestrial laser scanners. Herein, it is proven that most of the calibration parameters can be estimated from a single scanner station without a need for any reference information. This hypothesis is confirmed through an empirical experiment, which was conducted in a large machine hall using a Leica Scan Station P20 panoramic laser scanner. The calibration approach is based on the widely used target-based self-calibration approach, with small modifications. A new angular parameterization is used in order to implicitly introduce measurements in two faces of the instrument and for the implementation of calibration parameters describing genuine mechanical misalignments. Additionally, a computationally preferable calibration algorithm based on the two-face measurements is introduced. In the end, the calibration results are discussed, highlighting all necessary prerequisites for the scanner calibration from a single scanner station.