If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid...

Earlier today I finished my startup diagnostic routine, now I have one last calibration to do before I can begin working on the actual program: the calibration of the LiDAR boresight to the camera.  The purpose of this calibration is to tell MARCO exactly where on the camera CCD the LiDAR beam is striking the target.

This lets MARCO put its metaphorical finger down on the exact spot in its field of view where the LiDAR is returning a distance measurement from.

The calibration data was gathered by setting up a highly IR-reflective target (multiple strips of reflective tape leaned against some Styrofoam) on the floor of my lab (bedroom) and imaging through the IR filter.

Early attempts were fruitless, as the default shutter speed of the camera is too quick, allowing for only a brief exposure and consequently a very small chance of capturing the LiDAR footprint.  After increasing the exposure time, the images were too washed out to use due to ambient IR noise from the sun.

So I moved the experimental setup to my darkroom (closet with towels draped over the doorframe) and commanded MARCO to take images in there.
LiDAR calibration image, see if you can find the LiDAR footprint.

The LiDAR and camera are both on stable mountings, so the position of the LiDAR footprint only varies with distance to target.  So now that I have an image of the footprint, all I need is a distance measurement from MARCO to the target and I'm all set, but wherever would I get that... (see the previous post for a hint).

Armed with all the data I need, I am now ready to develop a calibration curve for how the position of the LiDAR footprint centroid on the camera CCD varies with target range, as soon as I feel like doing the math.

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