Running the calibration scan

The run-calibration-scan command-line tool performs the calibration scan as explained in Calibration algorithm. This program is written in C++ and is implemented in recorder/src/runCalibrationScan/runCalibration_main.cpp and runCalibration.hpp.

In brief, this program defines a set of "parking positions" on a regular grid covering the 2D area within the motion stage limits. Then, the motion stages move to each of these positions and stay there for a bit. While the stages are at the parking positions, the program takes a picture using each camera. This gives us the view of the same calibration board, which the user has printed out and placed on top of the experimental arena. This calibration board contains ArUco markers that allows us to establish the mapping between physical and imaged positions.

As a prerequisite, the user should have generated a calibration board (see Generating the calibration board) and printed it out.

The user should place the calibration board physically on top of the arena. Pay attention to the orientation: The corner with an arrow should be aligned with the corner marked with an arrow on the arena holder. Then, place the acrylic "paper weight" plate on top of the piece of paper to keep the paper pressed down.

Next, the user can run the run-calibration-scan program with the command-line arguments (you can also print out this help message by running run-calibration-scan --help):

$ ./run-calibration-scan --help
Usage: ./run-calibration-scan [OPTIONS]
Options:
  -h, --help                 Display this help message
  -p, --profile-dir PATH     Path to profile directory (default: ~/Spotlight/default/)
  -v, --verbose              Enable verbose output (debug level)
  --verbosity LEVEL          Set verbosity level (trace, debug, info, warn, error, critical, off)

Mainly, the user has to specify the profile using the --profile-dir (or -p for short) argument. For example, you might run:

$ ./align-cameras -p ~/Spotlight/sibo

It will take about 5 minutes for the scan to complete. After the program completes, the calibration images will stored in the "calibration" folder under the specified profile path.

Then, the next step is to run the fit-calibration-model program to fit the calibration parameters (see Fitting the calibration model).